Schmidt Ocean has posted new 4K video of a suite of amazing organisms from seamounts of the coast of Chile. I, however, strongly feel the video should have been accompanied by Chilean music. So set the Schmidt video to mute and play this instead or go here to this rather busy remix.

The post Seamounts of the Southeast Pacific first appeared on Deep Sea News.

1. A Global View of the Cold-Water Coral Reefs of the World
   • Erik E. Cordes, Furu Mienis, Ryan Gasbarro, Andrew Davies, Amy R. Baco, Angelo F. Bernardino et al.
   Pages 1-30
2. Biology, Ecology, and Threats to Cold-Water Corals on Brazil’s Deep-Sea Margin
   • Angelo F. Bernardino, Daniela Y. Gaurisas, Paulo Y. G. Sumida
   Pages 31-50
3. Cold-Water Corals of the World: Gulf of Mexico
   • Sandra Brooke, Amanda Demopoulos, Harry Roberts, Jay Lunden, Tracey Sutton, Andrew Davies
   Pages 51-90
4. Cold-Water Coral Reefs of the Southeastern United States
   • Andrea M. Quattrini, Martha S. Nizinski, Jay J. Lunden, Furu Mienis, Cheryl L. Morrison, Leslie Sautter et al.
   Pages 91-126
5. Norwegian Coral Reefs
   • Pål Buhl-Mortensen, André Freiwald
   Pages 127-144
6. Waters of Ireland and the UK
   • Sebastian J. Hennige, Furu Mienis, Andrew Wheeler, Veerle A. I. Huvenne
   Pages 145-169
7. Life and Death of Cold-Water Corals Across the Mediterranean Sea
   • Andrea Gori, Claudia Wienberg, Jordi Grinyó, Marco Taviani, Dierk Hebbeln, Claudio Lo Iacono et al.
   Pages 171-197
8. Cold-Water Coral Reefs in the Oxygen Minimum Zones Off West Africa
   • Claudia Wienberg, André Freiwald, Norbert Frank, Furu Mienis, Jürgen Titschack, Covadonga Orejas et al.
   Pages 199-235
9. New Zealand: Southwest Pacific Region
   • Dianne M. Tracey, Malcolm R. Clark, Ashley A. Rowden
   Pages 237-259
10. Deep-Sea Corals of the North and Central Pacific Seamounts
    • Amy R. Baco, Frank A. Parrish, Steven Auscavitch, Stephen Cairns, Beatriz E. Mejia-Mercado, Virginia Biede et al.
    Pages 261-293

The post Cold-Water Coral Reefs of the World first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The fossil record hints at a trend of shallow origins diversifying into the depths for certain marine organisms. However, conflicting results arise from approaches based on genetics, some supporting an onshore-offshore evolutionary pattern while others propose the opposite.

Enter the world of scleractinian corals, the stony or hard corals, a perfect testing ground for studying biodiversity across massive depth gradients. These corals span a wide depth range, from the ocean’s surface to depths surpassing 6,000 meters. How these creatures spread and settle in different areas, influenced by changes in their physical traits, help us understand the complex ways they’ve evolved over time and in response to the deep sea Take Micrabaciidae, a family of scleractinian corals. They have a slender, porous skeleton covered entirely by tissue—a probable adjustment for survival in the deep sea, where crafting a larger, sturdier skeleton becomes challenging due to lower aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate needed to build shells and skeletons, levels.

Half of the scleractinian corals form vibrant shallow reefs, while the other half, independent of the photic zone, thrives in cold waters across diverse regions and depths. This diversity not only paints a vivid picture of the coral world but also holds keys to understanding the origins of deep-sea life and diversity.

A new study by Campoy et al asks four key hypotheses about evolution of scleractinian corals

1. Origin of these corals might trace back to the upper bathyal zone (200–1000 meters). The steep and varied nature of this zone creates distinct environmental conditions, potentially fostering diverse adaptations across depths and serving as a catalyst for biodiversity
2. Lineages where symbiosis or coloniality emerged saw heightened rates of colonization. If these traits indeed bolstered the corals’ ability to spread, their emergence should align with faster colonization rates.
3. A prolonged evolutionary trend favoring faster colonization toward shallower waters. This hypothesis assumes that the common ancestor of these corals lacked symbiotic relationships and lived solitarily, suggesting that symbiosis inherently links to the sunlit zones, with colonial species generally occupying shallower depths compared to solitary ones.
4. Evolutionary forces predominantly shaping species’ depth ranges occur more significantly in shallower waters. As depth increases, environmental variability and interactions among species decrease, potentially slowing down the evolutionary pace through deeper zones.

The intricate dance of evolution (too much?) reveals itself through deep-water origins, surviving multiple geological changes and even global anoxic events. Specifically, the results show that the order Scleractinia originated 415.8 million years ago somewhere between 229–2287 meters depth. The emergence of the Scleractinia order in the deep sea aligns with a pattern of evolution from offshore to onshore and not providing strong support for upper bathyal zone origination as in hypothesis one. However, various coral lineages spread and settled at varying rates across different depths. Moreover, the pace of colonization slows at greater depths, underscoring the vulnerability of these ecosystems to further and current human exploitation.

Campoy, Ana N., et al. “Deep-sea origin and depth colonization associated with phenotypic innovations in scleractinian corals.” Nature Communications 14.1 (2023): 7458.

The post From Depths Unknown: Deciphering the Origins of Deep-Sea Biodiversity first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post Experience the Life of the Deep Gulf of Mexico in 20 Videos first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I was just listening to a podcast about how sea sponges use the pores all over their body to “bring in food and release wastes” and I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific way of saying the holes in sponges are all just mouths and buttholes so does that mean that when I’m using a sponge in the shower I’m cleaning my body with mouths and buttholes? Someone get me a marine biologist. And a loofah. And maybe some bleach.  -The Bloggess

All around you are animals with a single hole serving as both a mouth and anus.  These mono-orifice animals have an incomplete digestive system.  In contrast, those animals blessed with two holes, a tubular digestive system with an in and out hole, possess a complete digestive system.

Sponges are a bit of a unique case as a loose conglomeration of cells in a body full of pores and channels.  None of this really resembles organs or a digestive system with digesting occurring within individual cells.  However, the Cnidarians, including jellyfish, anemones, and corals,  are all uni-aperture.  We can also add the Ctenophores, the comb jellies, into this lone door group of animals.

In the flatworms, the Platyhelminthes, its mixed bag of one, two, and even more bodily gateways.  Most flatworms have no anus, but some particularly long species do possess an anus. In rare cases, flatworms with very complex branch guts can have more than one anus.  By the way, the plural can be either anuses or ani.

Peeping at the underside of a starfish, you might have only noticed a giant mouth.  You may be thinking to yourself, “I’ve never seen another opening.  Do starfishes have an anus?”  Of course, this is one of the great questions of life.  Indeed,  most starfishes have a complete digestive system with the anus being a small opening on the top. However, there is a large order of starfish, the Paxillosida, that lack an anus.  The only other group of Echinoderms to lack an anus, and even an intestine, is the brittle stars.

A solitary black hole may also occur during specific phases of animals life cycle.  An incomplete digestive system is known in some insects including the sap-sucking aphid relatives, the Phylloxera, during their sexual phase.  Some larvae including those of some fish and proboscis worms can be anally deficient.  Certain lifestyles also can lead to solo agujero such as in parasitic species, like parasitic copepods.

It’s important to remember that all animals start development with one hole, the blastopore.  In the ventrally chosen, a second hole forms later.  So the question remains if some animals form only a single hole is it a mouth that used as anus or anus used as a mouth?  The proverbial digestive pore chicken and egg scenario.

As described in this excellent post, 

Blastopore formation is started by a protein called disheveled, which gets stuck at the top of the egg and then activates a specific set of genes. In the same location of jellyfish embryos, however, there are genes strikingly similar to the mouth genes of bilaterians. In the sea urchin, a bilaterian, these same mouth genes are also on the top of the embryo. However, disheveled has moved to the bottom. The blastopore forms at this new site of disheveled accumulation, rather than at the mouth. The mouth genes that remain on top still direct the formation of the mouth there. Martindale and Hejnol posit that moving disheveled from the top to the bottom of the embryo in some animals moved the location of blastopore, but that the mouth stayed put. In some bilaterians, like urchins and humans, the blastopore then became the anus. In this scenario all mouths are homologous to each other, whether the animal has one or two holes.

Evolution can be a truly wonderful thing and then sometimes it can produce an animal with a mouth that still uses its anus to feed.

The post A Tale of One Opening first appeared on Deep Sea News.

One of my favorite papers of all time, illustrating the playfulness of scientists, is by the famous ecologist Stuart Hurlbert.  The paper in itself tackles a serious and major statistical issue of quantifying aspects of a species geographic range.  To illustrate the statistical shortcoming of current methods, Hurlbert models a fictitious species, the montane unicorn, yielding the title “Spatial Distribution of the Montane Unicorn.”

Acknowledgements of a paper are also a special place to glimpse the people behind the science. Take this paper.

We thank C. Ancell for the excellent preparation; F. Jackson, M. Brown, Dead Lizard Society (MSU), M. Gardner and M. Ivie for their helpful comments and discussion; L. Hall for the illustration; M. Drool for inspiration; and M. Holland, R. Kambic, J. Li, E. Morchhauser, C. Wong and Project Exploration.

A secret acknowledgment to beer occurs in the acknowledgements, M. Drool is Moose Drool brewed in Montana.

We also have this acknowledgement from a paper on personality in primates.

We thank Baboon Teams 2009, 2010 and 2011 for putting up with AJC standing around and swearing at baboons a lot.

In determining the authorship of paper, Sir Robert May noted this in a footnote in this paper.

The order of authorship was determined from a twenty-five-game croquet series held at Imperial College Field Station during summer 1973.

If you want a true view of scientist’s adoration, one needs to look at the naming of new species.  From the description of new species of sponge, Cladorhiza evae, by my friend and colleague Lonny Lundsten,

Named in honor of Eve Lundsten, beautiful wife of the first author whose commitment and support have endured through the years. Eve’s love for the Gulf of California also inspired this naming as the type specimen was collected in the deep sea, east Cabo Pulmo, Baja California Sur, Mexico, near where we honeymooned in 2006.

Beautiful.

I was equally moved when Michelle Taylor mentioned on Facebook that she had named a new species of coral, Narella valentine, after her mother and sister.

Etymology: Named in honour of Dr. Taylor’s mother, Valerie, after her secret spy name, Valentine. And in honour of Dr. Taylor’s sister, Claire, who was born on Valentine’s Day.

Another coral species, Narella candidae, was named after the coauthor’s, Alex Rodgers, wife.

Etymology: Named after Dr. Candida Rogers, wife of Prof. Alex Rogers, and suitably also Latin for ‘white’ and ‘radiant’.

When I asked Dr. Taylor why she honored her mother with the species name, she responded,

I thought it only appropriate, given the long suffering status of scientific families, that my Mum and sister had a coral named after them; it is truly above and beyond any duty, for anything in life, to have heard me say the words “I should be writing”, “I didn’t get the grant” 

How did Dr. Taylor’s mum respond?

My mum is chuffed  to bits [Northern UK slang for very happy], although a little worried her spy name is now public knowledge. Her standard operating procedure on covert operations will have to change…

The post The humanity within the pages of scientific manuscripts first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post The Fantastical Beasts of the Deep Gulf of Mexico first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post Look at These Amazing Deep-Sea Creatures from the Remote Pacific Right Now first appeared on Deep Sea News.

In which Dr. Milton Love ruins the magic behind Finding Dory with Science, but we love him anyways.

TUNE IN HERE

The post Science Spoiler Alert: Finding Dory first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Among the many revelations of recent studies of Gulf of Mexico deep-sea coral beds is that squat lobsters appear to be the lazy ninjas of the deep-sea. They sit waiting in coral beds practicing ju-jitsu while hapless squid drift by unawares. The crabs were presumed to be suspension feeders because of their posture on corals, but recent observations indicate they will attack fish and squid, even ROVs.

The post Dancing Squat Lobsters of the Deep first appeared on Deep Sea News.