Georgieva, MN, Wiklund, H, Bell, JB et al. (4 more authors) (2015) A chemosynthetic weed: the tubeworm Sclerolinum contortum is a bipolar, cosmopolitan species. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 15. 280. ISSN 1471-2148
Abstract
Background: Sclerolinum (Annelida: Siboglinidae) is a genus of small, wiry deep-sea tubeworms that depend on an endosymbiosis with chemosynthetic bacteria for their nutrition, notable for their ability to colonise a multitude of reducing environments. Since the early 2000s, a Sclerolinum population has been known to inhabit sediment-hosted hydrothermal vents within the Bransfield Strait, Southern Ocean, and whilst remaining undescribed, it has been suggested to play an important ecological role in this ecosystem. Here, we show that the Southern Ocean Sclerolinum population is not a new species, but more remarkably in fact belongs to the species S. contortum, first described from an Arctic mud volcano located nearly 16,000 km away. Results: Our new data coupled with existing genetic studies extend the range of this species across both polar oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. Our analyses show that the populations of this species are structured on a regional scale, with greater genetic differentiation occurring between rather than within populations. Further details of the external morphology and tube structure of S. contortum are revealed through confocal and SEM imaging, and the ecology of this worm is discussed. Conclusions: These results shed further insight into the plasticity and adaptability of this siboglinid group to a range of reducing conditions, and into the levels of gene flow that occur between populations of the same species over a global extent.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 Georgieva et al. Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
Keywords: | Siboglinidae; Polychaeta; Annelida; Antarctica; Gene flow; Deep-sea; Connectivity; Hydrothermal vent; Cold seep; Biogeography |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 16 Dec 2015 12:37 |
Last Modified: | 12 Feb 2019 13:14 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0559-y |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BioMed Central |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12862-015-0559-y |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:92893 |