Department of Oceanography, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822; email:
Ann Rev Mar Sci. 2015;7:571-96. doi: 10.1146/annurev-marine-010213-135144. Epub 2014 Sep 10.
Whale falls produce remarkable organic- and sulfide-rich habitat islands at the seafloor. The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in studies of modern and fossil whale remains, yielding exciting new insights into whale-fall ecosystems. Giant body sizes and especially high bone-lipid content allow great-whale carcasses to support a sequence of heterotrophic and chemosynthetic microbial assemblages in the energy-poor deep sea. Deep-sea metazoan communities at whale falls pass through a series of overlapping successional stages that vary with carcass size, water depth, and environmental conditions. These metazoan communities contain many new species and evolutionary novelties, including bone-eating worms and snails and a diversity of grazers on sulfur bacteria. Molecular and paleoecological studies suggest that whale falls have served as hot spots of adaptive radiation for a specialized fauna; they have also provided evolutionary stepping stones for vent and seep mussels and could have facilitated speciation in other vent/seep taxa.
鲸落在海底产生了显著的富有机物质和硫化物的栖息地岛屿。在过去的十年中，对现代和化石鲸类遗骸的研究急剧增加，为鲸落生态系统提供了令人兴奋的新见解。巨大的体型和特别高的骨脂含量使大型鲸类尸体能够在能量匮乏的深海中支持一系列异养和化能微生物组合。在鲸落处的深海后生动物群落经历了一系列与尸体大小、水深和环境条件相关的重叠演替阶段。这些后生动物群落包含许多新物种和进化新奇，包括食骨蠕虫和蜗牛以及硫细菌的多种捕食者。分子和古生态学研究表明，鲸落是一个专门动物群辐射适应的热点；它们也为喷口和渗口贻贝提供了进化的踏脚石，并可能促进了其他喷口/渗口分类群的物种形成。
