Four hundred eruptions of 3 active vents within the summit crater of the volcano Stromboli were recorded during 43.5 hours. The main vent (1) typically erupts pasty molten bombs in a 2 to 5 second burst with a mean frequency of 10.7 minutes. A second vent (2) normally fires a 1 second cannon-like burst of molten material averaging every 54 minutes. A third vent (3) predominantly erupts hot lumi...

Microorganisms throughout the dark ocean use reduced sulfur compounds for chemolithoautotrophy. In many deep-sea hydrothermal vents, sulfide oxidation is quantitatively the most important chemical energy source for microbial metabolism both at and beneath the seafloor. In this study, the presence and activity of vent endemic Epsilonproteobacteria was examined in six low-temperature diffuse vent...

Deep-sea vents are the light-independent, highly productive ecosystems driven primarily by chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms, in particular by -Proteobacteria phylogenetically related to important pathogens. We analyzed genomes of two deep-sea vent -Proteobacteria strains, Sulfurovum sp. NBC37-1 and Nitratiruptor sp. SB155-2, which provide insights not only into their unusual niche on the se...

Hydrothermal vents represent a unique habitat in the marine ecosystem characterized with high water temperature and toxic acidic chemistry. Vents are distributed at depths ranging from a few meters to several thousand meters. The biological communities of shallow-water vents have, however, been insufficiently studied in most biogeographic areas. We attempted to characterize the macrofauna and m...

Deep-sea hydrothermal vents are among the most extreme and dynamic environments on Earth. However, islands of highly dense and biologically diverse communities exist in the immediate vicinity of hydrothermal vent flows, in stark contrast to the surrounding bare seafloor. These communities comprise organisms with distinct metabolisms based on chemosynthesis and growth rates comparable to those f...

[1] The Deep Ocean Raman In Situ Spectrometer (DORISS) instrument was deployed at the Sea Cliff Hydrothermal Field and Hydrate Ridge in July 2004. The first in situ Raman spectra of hydrothermal minerals, fluids, and bacterial mats were obtained. These spectra were analyzed and compared to laboratory Raman measurements of standards and samples collected from the site. Spectra of vent fluid ( 29...

Changes in climate and land use that interact synergistically to increase fire frequencies and intensities in tropical regions are predicted to drive forests to new grass-dominated stable states. To reveal the mechanisms for such a transition, we established 50 ha plots in a transitional forest in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon to different fire treatments (unburned, burned annually (B1yr) o...

The influence of climate and time of deposition on the colonization of sheep faeces by nematophagous fungi was examined in the Mata Region of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Sheep faeces were collected from the rectums of animals and deposited on pastures of Brachiaria decumbens in the months of July and October 1995 and January and April 1996. Samples of the deposited faeces were recovered 3, 7 an...

Since deep-sea hydrothermal vent fluids are enriched with toxic metals, it was hypothesized that (i) the biota in the vicinity of a vent is adapted to life in the presence of toxic metals and (ii) metal toxicity is modulated by the steep physical-chemical gradients that occur when anoxic, hot fluids are mixed with cold oxygenated seawater. We collected bacterial biomass at different distances f...