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Deep-sea hydrothermal vent tube worm — printable fact sheet
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Deep-sea hydrothermal vent tube worm
Riftia pachyptila
Riftia pachyptila grows up to two metres tall in dense thickets around hydrothermal vents on the East Pacific Rise, and as an adult it has no mouth, no gut and no anus. It is fed entirely by billions of chemosynthetic bacteria packed into a specialised organ called the trophosom…
Did you know?
- Tube worms can survive in total darkness at temperatures near freezing, except for the immediate vicinity of the vent where water can exceed 350°C, thanks to their highly specialized adaptations.
- Because vent fields are ephemeral, Riftia has to colonise new ones fast, and its larvae can survive drifting for weeks to find a vent that may be hundreds of kilometres away. The discovery of these worms is what established that entire ecosystems can run on chemical energy from the Earth rather than on sunlight. The white tube is made of chitin and protein and is tough enough to protect the worm from the scalding, acidic fluid venting a few centimetres away. Each worm has to straddle a knife-edge, keeping its plume in water cool enough not to cook it but rich enough in sulphide to feed its bacteria.
What I learned
Draw the deep-sea hydrothermal vent tube worm
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