Re­search

Re­search in the Sym­bi­osis De­part­ment fo­cuses on chemo­syn­thetic sym­bi­oses in mar­ine in­ver­teb­rates. In these sym­bi­oses, chemo­syn­thetic bac­teria provide most or all of the host’s nu­tri­tion by tap­ping the en­ergy in re­duced com­pounds such as meth­ane, hy­dro­gen, or hy­dro­gen sulf­ide, and us­ing this en­ergy to build or­ganic mat­ter to feed their hosts.

Chemo­syn­thetic sym­bi­oses were first dis­covered in the late 1970s at hy­dro­thermal vents in the deep sea.

“Is­n’t the deep ocean sup­posed to be like a desert?”

“Yes"

“Well, there’s all these an­im­als down here.”

Iron­ic­ally, chemo­syn­thetic sym­bi­oses are abund­ant in much more eas­ily ac­cess­ible hab­it­ats such as shal­low wa­ter sed­i­ments, but these were only dis­covered more re­cently. In­triguingly, these sym­bi­oses did not only evolve once, but have been es­tab­lished nu­mer­ous times in­de­pend­ently in a broad vari­ety of an­imal phyla in­clud­ing nem­at­odes, an­nelids, mol­lusks, flat­worms, sponges and arth­ro­pods.