Ocean census uncovers 'new world' of marine microbe life

Jean-louis Santini Yahoo News 18 Apr 10;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – An ocean census has revealed a "new world" of richly diverse marine microbe life that could help scientists understand more about key environmental processes on Earth, a study said Sunday.

Scientists participating in the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM) said they had uncovered an astonishing array of hard-to-see marine lifeforms, including microbes, zooplankton and larvae.

Traditional research methods have already isolated some 20,000 marine microbes, but new data suggests the true numbers are much higher.

"The total number of marine microbes, including both bacteria and archaea (single-cell microorganisms), based on molecular characterization, is likely closer to a billion," said ICoMM's scientific advisory council chair John Baross, of the University of Washington.

The marine microbes in fact constitute somewhere between 50 to 90 percent of all ocean biomass, and by volume weigh the equivalent of 240 billion African elephants, according to the researchers.

"In no other realm of ocean life has the magnitude of Census discovery been as extensive as in the world of microbes," said Mitch Sogin, of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachussetts.

Determining the number, variety and role of different forms of marine microbes provides key insight into "the size, dynamics and stability of the Earth's food chain, carbon cycle and other planetary fundamentals," researchers said.

This marine life is responsible for over 95 percent of respiration in the oceans, thereby helping to maintain the conditions humans need to survive on Earth, they added.

They function as key recyclers, turning atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean into carbon that goes back into the ground. They perform similar functions for nitrogen, sulfur, iron, manganese and other elements.

Among other discoveries made by the research was the location of massive "mats" of microbes that carpet areas of sea floor.

One located off the west coast of South America covers a surface comparable in size to Greece and is among Earth's largest masses of life, researchers said.

The study also found that some microbes and bacteria formed symbiotic relationships with marine animals, living on their skin or in their guts.

The revelation could uncover hundreds of millions of new microbial species and provides "a huge frontier for the next decade," Baross said.

The research was conducted at more than 1,200 sites worldwide, allowing scientists to amass 18 million DNA sequences of microbial life.

The latest finding is part of the decade-long research involved in the ocean census, which will conclude October 4 with closing ceremonies in London.

Involving more than 2,000 scientists from more than 80 nations, the census is one of the largest global scientific collaborations ever undertaken, according to organizers.

Microbes galore in seas; "spaghetti" mats Pacific
Alister Doyle, Reuters 18 Apr 10;

OSLO (Reuters) - The ocean depths are home to myriad species of microbes, mostly hard to see but including spaghetti-like bacteria that form whitish mats the size of Greece on the floor of the Pacific, scientists said on Sunday.

The survey, part of a 10-year Census of Marine Life, turned up hosts of unknown microbes, tiny zooplankton, crustaceans, worms, burrowers and larvae, some of them looking like extras in a science fiction movie and underpinning all life in the seas.

"In no other realm of ocean life has the magnitude of Census discovery been as extensive as in the world of microbes," said Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, head of the marine microbe census.

The census estimated there were a mind-boggling "nonillion" -- or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (30 zeroes) -- individual microbial cells in the oceans, weighing as much as 240 billion African elephants, the biggest land animal.

Getting a better idea of microbes, the "hidden majority" making up 50 to 90 percent of biomass in the seas, will give a benchmark for understanding future shifts in the oceans, perhaps linked to climate change or pollution.

Among the biggest masses of life on the planet are carpets on the seabed formed by giant multi-cellular bacteria that look like thin strands of spaghetti. They feed on hydrogen sulphide in oxygen-starved waters in a band off Peru and Chile.

"Fishermen sometimes can't lift nets from the bottom because they have more bacteria than shrimp," Victor Gallardo, vice chair of the Census Scientific Steering Committee, told Reuters. "We've measured them up to a kilo (2.2 lbs) per square meter."

GHOSTLY MATS

The census said they carpeted an area the size of Greece -- about 130,000 sq km (50,000 sq miles) or the size of the U.S. state of Alabama. Toxic to humans, the bacteria are food for shrimp or worms and so underpin rich Pacific fish stocks.

The bacteria had also been found in oxygen-poor waters off Panama, Ecuador, Namibia and Mexico as well as in "dead zones" under some salmon farms. They were similar to ecosystems on earth that thrived from 2.5 billion to 650 million years ago.

Overall in the oceans, up to a billion microbe species may await identification under the Census, an international 10-year project due for completion in October 2010.

Tiny life was found everywhere, including at thermal vents with temperatures at 150 Celsius (300F) or in rocks 1,626 meters (5,335 ft) below the sea floor. Many creatures lack names or are hard to pronounce like loriciferans, polychaetes or copepods.

One major finding was that rare microbes are often found in samples where they can be outnumbered 10,000 to one by more common species. Isolated microbes may be lying in wait for a change in conditions that could bring a population boom.

Ann Bucklin, head of the Census of Marine Zooplankton that include tiny transparent crustaceans or jellyfish, said the seas were barely studied even by the census.

"Seventy percent of the oceans are deeper than 1,000 meters," Bucklin, of the University of Connecticut, told Reuters. "The deep layer is the source of the hidden diversity."

Paul Snelgrove, of Memorial University in Canada, said one sample in the South Atlantic in an area the size of a small bathroom -- 5.4 square meters -- turned up 700 species of copepod, a type of crustacean, 99 percent of them unfamiliar.

Just finding Latin names for each find will be hard. Scientists had rejected the idea of raising funds by letting people pay to have a marine "bug" named after them.

(Editing by Charles Dick)


Counting sea life, sometimes little things are big
Randolph E. Schmid Associated Press Google News 18 Apr 10;

WASHINGTON — If the Census Bureau thinks it has its hands full counting Americans, imagine what scientists are up against in trying to tally every living thing in the ocean, including microbes so small they seem invisible.

And just try to get them to mail back a form.

The worldwide Census of Marine Life has four field projects focusing on hard-to-see sea life such as tiny microbes, zooplankton, larvae and burrowers in the sea bed.

Tiny as individuals, these life forms are massive as groups and provide food that helps underpin better-known living things.

"Scientists are discovering and describing an astonishing new world of marine microbial diversity and abundance, distribution patterns and seasonal changes," said Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., leader of the International Census of Marine Microbes.

The Census of Marine Life, which is scheduled to be reported Oct. 4 in London, has involved more than 2,000 scientists from more than 80 nations.

The decade-long census has discovered more than 5,000 new forms of marine life. Researchers think there may be several times that many yet to be found.

Previous updates have focused on larger creatures, such as a city of brittle stars off the coast of New Zealand, an Antarctic expressway where octopuses ride along in a flow of extra salty water, the deepest comb jellyfish ever found and The White Shark Cafe, a deep Pacific Ocean site where sharks congregate in winter.

Now the researchers have turned to the tiniest of things, some of which burrow in the sea floor.

Remotely operated deep-sea vehicles discovered that roundworms dominate the deepest, darkest abyss. Sometimes, more than 500,000 can exist in just over a square yard of soft clay. Only a few different types have been studied.

There are also 16,000 or more species of seaworms. There are loriciferans, which the scientists call "girdle wearers" because of hind shells resembling a corset. And there are hundreds of types of tiny crustaceans.

"Such findings make us look at the deep sea from a new perspective," says researcher Pedro Martinez Arbizu of the German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research. "Far from being a lifeless desert, the deep sea rivals such highly diverse ecosystems as tropical rainforests and coral reefs."

Consider zooplankton, the tiny, often transparent animals that some call sea bugs. They form a vital link in the food chain.

As of 2004, scientists had identified about 7,000 species of zooplankton. Now they expect that to double when they finish analyzing all the samples collected in the marine census.

Improved techniques such as DNA analysis have helped unravel some errors along the way. DNA, of course, is the genetic code in the cells of each living creature.

Tracey Sutton of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and colleagues led by the Smithsonian Institution's G. David Johnson used genetics to show that three types of fish thought to be different are really one.

They found that even though they look different, the Mirapinnidae (tapetails), Megalomycteridae (bignose fishes) and Cetomimidae (whalefishes) are really the same species. The tapetails are the larvae and when they grow up they become either the bignoses (girls) or the wehalefish (boys).

After studying samples taken from more than 1,000 sites, scientists concluded there may be as many as 100 times more microbe genera in the sea than they had thought. Indeed, a 2007 study in the English Channel alone yielded 7,000 new genera of microorganisms.

Genus is the category of life ranked between family and species. For example the mammal family has many genera, such as homo (humans), canis (dogs) and equus (horse).

What ocean microbes lack in size they make up for in numbers. Marine census researchers calculate there are a "nonillion" of them.

Never heard of nonillion? Well, it's a lot. It's 1,000 times 1 billion, times 1 billion, times 1 billion.

Of course no one can really envision a number like that, so the researchers turned to the popular comparison measure — the African elephant.

A nonillion microbe cells, they say, is about the same weight as 240 billion African elephants — or the equivalent of 35 elephants for every person on Earth.

And that's just the microbes.
On the Net:

* Census of Marine Life: http://www.coml.org
* International Census of Marine Microbes: http://icomm.mbl.edu/
* Marine Biological Laboratory: http://www.mbl.edu/
* German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research: http://tinyurl.com/y792dye
* Virginia Institute of Marine Science: http://www.vims.edu/


Slide show of photos on the National Geographic website.

Also on the BBC website.