Deep sea research: Mobile amphipods at 3000 meters below sea level

2023-10-17 07:36:06

NHM Vienna involved in the discovery of a global distribution of a species of amphipod

Vienna (OTS) – An international research team involving the Natural History Museum Vienna has discovered the predatory amphipod species Rhachotropis abyssalis for the first time in three different oceans that are up to 20,000 kilometers apart. The animals each live at a depth of more than three kilometers. The results were published in the journal “Scientific Reports”.

The Abyssal, the deep seabed below a depth of 3,000 meters, is the largest and least explored habitat on earth. A particular challenge for researchers is to recover invertebrates from these depths.

Amphipods are one of the key players at the bottom of the deep sea, where they occur in large numbers and species. Amphipods are an essential part of the food web. The females care for the brood and carry their eggs and young in a brood pouch. Unlike many other marine invertebrates, they do not have free-swimming larvae that can spread over long distances in the sea.

Researchers from the University of Hamburg, the Natural History Museum of Vienna and the University of Lodz have now found the amphipod species Rhachotropis abyssalis in the Ross Sea, the Pacific and the North Atlantic at a depth of several kilometers.

“What is particularly remarkable is that these regions are up to 20,000 kilometers apart,” explains Dr. Anne-Nina Lörz, who conducts research in the Department of Biology in the Institute for Marine Ecosystem and Fisheries Sciences and at the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) at the University of Hamburg. “The animals from the three regions were extremely similar, both in their external appearance and genetically.”

In the deep sea, this is the first record of an invertebrate predator without a larval distribution that has such an extensive geographical distribution, which could also be confirmed by genetic studies.

“The species has been found in three very distant corners of the world. We assume that it also occurs in the areas in between and has simply been overlooked there until now,” says Dr. Martin Schwentner from the Natural History Museum Vienna and co-author of the study.

Rhachotropis abyssalis was first discovered in 2010 by Dr. Anne-Nina Lörz recovered and described from the Antarctic Ross Sea. The new evidence was now made possible, among other things, by expeditions on the research ship SONNE into the Kurile-Kamchatka Rift and the Labrador Sea.

“Perhaps this extensive distribution represents a rare exception for breeding predators – or perhaps these results are not an exception at all, but a reflection of the rare sampling and rare taxonomic study of deep-sea invertebrates,” says Lörz. “Our results underline that we need to learn more about biodiversity and biography in the deep sea in order to understand and thus protect these ecosystems.”

Originalpublikation:
Anne-Nina Lörz, Martin Schwentner, Simon Bober, Anna Jażdżewska (2023) Multi-ocean distribution of a brooding predator in the abyssal benthos, Scientific Reports 13, 15867 (2023).

Questions & Contact:

Scientific queries:
Dr. Martin Schwentner
Natural History Museum Vienna
3. Zoological Department of the NHM Vienna
Curator of the Crustacea collection

Tel. [phone] – 330
[e-mail]

General questions:
Mag. Irina Kubadinov
Natural History Museum Vienna
Head of press department, press spokesperson

Tel.: + 43 (1) 521 77 – 410
Irina. [e-mail]

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