Life Sciences Department, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2013 Aug 14;280(1768):20131390. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.1390. Print 2013 Oct 7.
We report the results from the first experimental study of the fate of whale and wood remains on the Antarctic seafloor. Using a baited free-vehicle lander design, we show that whale-falls in the Antarctic are heavily infested by at least two new species of bone-eating worm, Osedax antarcticus sp. nov. and Osedax deceptionensis sp. nov. In stark contrast, wood remains are remarkably well preserved with the absence of typical wood-eating fauna such as the xylophagainid bivalves. The combined whale-fall and wood-fall experiment provides support to the hypothesis that the Antarctic circumpolar current is a barrier to the larvae of deep-water species that are broadly distributed in other ocean basins. Since humans first started exploring the Antarctic, wood has been deposited on the seafloor in the form of shipwrecks and waste; our data suggest that this anthropogenic wood may be exceptionally well preserved. Alongside the new species descriptions, we conducted a comprehensive phylogenetic analyses of Osedax, suggesting the clade is most closely related to the frenulate tubeworms, not the vestimentiferans as previous reported.
我们报告了首次关于南极海底鲸骨和木本残骸命运的实验研究结果。使用有诱饵的自由降落着陆器设计，我们表明，南极的鲸落中至少有两种新的食骨蠕虫，即 Osedax antarcticus sp. nov. 和 Osedax deceptionensis sp. nov. 大量滋生。相比之下，木本残骸保存得非常完好，缺乏典型的食木动物群，如 Xylophagainidae 双壳类。鲸落和木本残骸的联合实验支持了这样的假设，即南极环极流是广泛分布在其他海洋盆地的深海物种幼虫的障碍。自从人类首次开始探索南极以来，木材就以沉船和废物的形式被沉积在海底；我们的数据表明，这种人为的木材可能保存得异常完好。除了新物种的描述，我们还对 Osedax 进行了全面的系统发育分析，表明该进化枝与 frenulate 管蠕虫关系最密切，而不是以前报道的 vestimentiferans。
