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  • Review Article
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Feast and famine — microbial life in the deep-sea bed

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 5, pages 770–781 (2007)Cite this article

Key Points

  • The seabed is a highly diverse and dynamic environment that ranges from the desert-like deep-sea floor to the rich oases at cold seeps, hydrothermal vents and large food falls.

  • As well as the sedimentation of organic material from above, plate tectonics and other geological processes transport chemical energy to the seafloor from below, which provides a significant fraction of the deep-sea energy flux.

  • Where chemical energy, such as hydrogen sulphide, methane or hydrogen, is transported from the subsurface up to the seafloor, rich and diverse microbial communities can proliferate.

  • Most of the prokaryotes on Earth can be found in the sub-seafloor and survive in conditions of extreme energy limitation, with apparent generation times of up to thousands of years.

  • In the most energy-depleted deep biosphere, life might be based on the cleavage of water by natural radioisotopes or on other, unknown energy sources.

  • The only environmental variable that appears to set the ultimate limit for life in the seabed is temperature.

  • The diversity and distribution of the three domains of life — Bacteria, Archaea and Eukaryotes — in the seabed remain poorly understood.

Abstract

The seabed is a diverse environment that ranges from the desert-like deep seafloor to the rich oases that are present at seeps, vents, and food falls such as whales, wood or kelp. As well as the sedimentation of organic material from above, geological processes transport chemical energy — hydrogen, methane, hydrogen sulphide and iron — to the seafloor from the subsurface below, which provides a significant proportion of the deep-sea energy. At the sites on the seafloor where chemical energy is delivered, rich and diverse microbial communities thrive. However, most subsurface microorganisms live in conditions of extreme energy limitation, with mean generation times of up to thousands of years. Even in the most remote subsurface habitats, temperature rather than energy seems to set the ultimate limit for life, and in the deep biosphere, where energy is most depleted, life might even be based on the cleavage of water by natural radioisotopes. Here, we review microbial biodiversity and function in these intriguing environments.

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Figure 1: Vertical section of the seabed and seafloor structures.
Figure 2: Global trends of microbial biomass in the ocean and seabed.
Figure 3: Microbial life at seep ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support for writing this review was provided to the laboratory of B.B.J. by the Max Planck Society and the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie, and to the laboratory of A.B. by the EU FP6 program HERMES (Hot spot ecosystem research on ocean margins of European Seas). We thank K. Edwards, W. Bach, N. Dubilier, J. Harder and F. Wenzhöfer for helpful comments and seafloor images, and A. Schippers for providing published data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Celsiusstrasse 1, Bremen, D-28359, Germany

    Bo Barker Jørgensen & Antje Boetius

  2. Jacobs University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, Bremen, D-28759, Germany

    Antje Boetius

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  1. Bo Barker Jørgensen
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Correspondence to Bo Barker Jørgensen.

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Census of Marine Life

Genomes OnLine Database v 2.0

HERMES

International Census of Marine Microbes

Glossary

Benthic

Relating to or occurring at the seafloor.

Mud volcano

A large seabed formation (hundreds of metres to kilometres in diameter) that is caused by the eruption of subsurface gas, fluid and mud.

Anoxic

The absence of oxygen in the sea.

Oligotrophic

An aquatic environment that has low levels of nutrients and algal photosynthetic production (for example, high mountain lakes or the open ocean).

Terrigenous

Material that is derived from the terrestrial environment.

Detrital

Dead organic material.

Pelagic

Relating to or occurring in the water column.

Abyssal

Related to the deep seafloor (or abyss) that is situated between the continental rise (<3,000 metres) and the deep trenches (>6,000 metres), at an average depth of 4,000 metres.

Phytodetritus

The remains of dead plants, particularly of microalgae that originated from the surface waters.

Bioturbation

The displacement and mixing of sediment particles by benthic fauna (animals).

Humic substance

A degraded and chemically altered organic material.

Heterotrophic

The acquisition of metabolic energy by the consumption of living or dead organic matter.

Hot-spot ecosystem

An ecosystem of high or special biodiversity within a larger area of low or normal biodiversity.

Chemolithoautotrophic

The metabolism of an organism that obtains its energy from the oxidation of inorganic compounds and uses only carbon dioxide as a source of carbon.

Primary producer

An organism that is the original source of organic material in an ecosystem — plants, algae or chemosynthetic microorganisms.

Chemosynthesis

The biological conversion of 1 carbon molecule (usually carbon dioxide or methane) and nutrients into organic matter using the oxidation of inorganic molecules (for example, hydrogen gas or hydrogen sulphide) as a source of energy, rather than sunlight.

Pockmark

A depression in the seafloor 1–100 m in diameter that is presumably caused by eruptions of subsurface gases.

Gas chimney

A vertically extending circular anomaly (or blank) in the 3D seismic record of the seabed that indicates pathways of gas leakage.

Brine pond

A submarine accumulation of dense, salty seawater that leaks from the subsurface and fills depressions in the seabed.

Oil and asphalt seep

A natural leak of hydrocarbon (oil, tar or asphalt) from the deep seabed to the seafloor.

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Jørgensen, B., Boetius, A. Feast and famine — microbial life in the deep-sea bed. Nat Rev Microbiol 5, 770–781 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1745

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