Giant Tube Worm (Riftia pachyptila)

Assembled from 17 blocks · 2 evidence · 11 related

1. Story
2. A vestimentiferan annelid found at eastern Pacific hydrothermal vents, reaching a metre or more, with a white chitinous tube and a red plume rich in haemoglobin. The adult has no mouth and no functional gut: it houses chemoautotrophic sulphur-oxidising bacteria in a specialised organ, the trophosome, and lives entirely on the carbon those symbionts fix. It is the clearest single demonstration that a large animal can be built without any sunlight anywhere in its food chain. First described from the 1977 Galapagos Rift discovery; the symbiosis was established by Cavanaugh and colleagues in 1981.
3. Knowledge
4. Bathypelagic Zone (Midnight Zone)
5. Giant Tube Worm (Riftia pachyptila)
6. Connections
7. Hydrothermal Venting
8. Bathypelagic Zone (Midnight Zone)
9. Alvin finds hydrothermal vents on the Galapagos Rift
10. Chemoautotrophic symbionts identified in Riftia pachyptila
11. Mesopelagic Zone (Twilight Zone)
12. Abyssopelagic Zone (Abyssal Zone)
13. Marine Snow
14. Giant Tube Worm (Riftia pachyptila)
15. Evidence
16. Direct submersible observation in February 1977 documented hydrothermal venting on the Galapagos Rift and dense associated animal communities including clams, mussels and large tube worms, in permanent darkness.
17. Riftia pachyptila houses sulphur-oxidising chemoautotrophic bacteria in the trophosome; the adult worm lacks a mouth and functional gut and depends on carbon fixed by these symbionts.