Life Discovered On Dead Hydrothermal Vents

Scientists at USC have uncovered evidence that even when hydrothermal sea vents go dormant and their blistering warmth turns to frigid cold, life goes on.

Or rather, it is replaced.

A team led by USC microbiologist Katrina Edwards found that the microbes that thrive on hot fluid methane and sulfur spewed by active hydrothermal vents are supplanted, once the vents go cold, by microbes that feed on the solid iron and sulfur that make up the vents themselves.

The findings — based on samples collected for Edwards by the U.S. Navy deep sea submersible Alvin (famed for its exploration of the Titanic in 1986) — provide a rare example of ecological succession in microbes.

The findings were published in an mBio article authored by Edwards, USC postdoctoral researcher Jason Sylvan and Brandy Toner of the University of Minnesota.

Ecological succession is the biological phenomenon whereby one form of life takes the place of another as conditions in an area change — a phenomenon documented in plants and animals.