Earth Science - Deep Sea

Earth Science - Deep Sea Biodiversity

SCIENCE ARTICLE SUMMARY: DEEP-SEA SPECIES BIODIVERSITY

According to Earth Science researchers, the ability of biological ecosystems to function healthily, a complex system of many different natural processes is required.

Organic matter must be produced, consumed, and thereby transferred up through multiple, progressively higher levels of the food chain. Afterwards, it is excreted, decomposed, and eventually returned to the ecosystem through the atmosphere and the Earth's surface as regenerated nutrients for subsequent repetition of the same cycle.

Sixty-five percent of the Earth's surface lies under the waters of the deep oceans, and the underwater environment is the single largest ecosystem on the planet. With the largest concentration of animal and other living species, the deep sea ecosystem is more important than any other ecosystem to the essential cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus of the entire biosphere. Nevertheless, because of the difficulties in exploring the deep-sea environment, scientists lack critical data about the overall health of this crucial ecosystem.

Italian researcher Roberto Danovaro of the Polytechnic University of Marche reports that maintaining biodiversity of deep-sea species is critical to the continued health of the underwater ecosystem. His recent study of nematode worms suggests that the sustained diversity of ocean species is an important component of the overall measure of health in the entire underwater ecosystem. The particular type of organisms on which his study focused are one of the most abundant classes of all ocean species and may actually account for 90% of all underwater species on the planet.

Danovaro's study provides evidence that the measurable diversity among nematode worms is a reliable indication of the overall biodiversity of the ocean ecosystem. According to the research, areas with greater levels of species biodiversity showed exponentially higher efficiency of all the important elements of ecosystem processes essential to life on Earth, including human life. The significance of this finding is primarily that the recorded diversity level of the species studied corresponds directly to all the other elements of the complex ecosystem processes essential to the planet's atmosphere and to the continued replenishment of the planet's surface.

Danovaro also points out that the direct relationship between the number of supported species and the efficiency of ecosystem processes revealed in his findings demonstrate that the deep-sea ecosystem is even more dependent on biodiversity than previously thought. On land, biodiversity is known to be important in the overall ecosystem, but it is only one of many other interrelated component of overall ecosystem efficiency and health. Apparently, in the underwater environment, biodiversity is not just another contributing factor, but rather, it is the single most important specific aspect of measurable factors that determines the state of the entire ecosystem.