Carbon isotope fractionation factors associated with the aerobic consumption of methane (C1), ethane (C2), propane (C3), and nbutane (C4) were determined from incubations of marine sediment collected from the Coal Oil Point hydrocarbon seep field, located offshore Santa Barbara, CA. Hydrogen isotope fractionation factors for C1, C2 and C3 were determined concurrently. Fresh sediment samples fro...

Although event-related fMRI is able to reliably detect brief changes in brain activity and is now widely used throughout systems and cognitive neuroscience, there have been no previous reports of event-related spinal cord fMRI. This is likely attributable to the various technical challenges associated with spinal fMRI (e.g., imaging a suitable length of the cord, reducing image artifacts from t...

Submarine mud volcanism represents an important pathway for methane from deeper reservoirs to the surface, where it enters the benthic carbon cycle. To quantify overall methane release from the Captain Arutyunov mud volcano (CAMV) and to assess the contribution of macrobenthic seep organisms to the regulation of the benthic methane flux, we linked water column methane concentrations, seabed met...

Site F is the most vigorous cold seep known on continental slope of northern South China Sea. Up to now, microbial community structures in sediments based high-throughput sequencing 16S rRNA genes have been studied extensively. However, few studies investigated at fine vertical scales and control stations outside F. In this study, a comprehensive investigation communities along depths varying f...

In contrast to other oligotrophic water bodies the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) hosts an abundance of hydrocarbon seeps, which likely influences the microbial assemblages it hosts particularly regarding the availability of labile carbon in the aphotic GOM. The aphotic zone receives direct injection of seep methane (CH4), but CH4 from an unknown source has been reported at supersaturated concentrations ...

Quantitative collections of tubewormand mussel-associated communities were obtained from 3 cold seep sites in the deep Gulf of Mexico: in Atwater Valley at 1890m depth, in Alaminos Canyon at 2200m depth, and from the Florida Escarpment at 3300m depth. A total of 50 taxa of macroand megafauna were collected including 2 species of siboglinid tubeworms and 3 species of bathymodiolin mussels. In ge...

BACKGROUND Vestimentiferan tubeworms are some of the most recognizable fauna found at deep-sea cold seeps, isolated environments where hydrocarbon rich fluids fuel biological communities. Several studies have investigated tubeworm population structure; however, much is still unknown about larval dispersal patterns at Gulf of Mexico (GoM) seeps. As such, researchers have applied microsatellite m...

In marine sediments the anaerobic oxidation of methane with sulfate as electron acceptor (AOM) is responsible for the removal of a major part of the greenhouse gas methane. AOM is performed by consortia of anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea (ANME) and their specific partner bacteria. The physiology of these organisms is poorly understood, which is due to their slow growth with doubling times i...