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SEAS: Student Experiments At Sea

Larval ecology of deep-sea mussels

There follows a 2-column table. The first column contains a picture. The second contains descriptive text.

Deep-sea mussel bed, gleaming in the light from a submersible

Collecting mussels

But first, she needs some deep-sea mussels. These mussels are mixotrophic, that is, they are able to feed and obtain energy in multiple ways. One way is to obtain nourishment from the symbiotic bacteria living in their gill tissue. The bacteria are chemosynthetic (creating sugars using energy from methane gas that bubbles up from the seafloor); they share the sugars with the mussels.

The mussels can also filter feed on food particles that drift down from surface waters (e.g. dead plankton). Since these deep-sea mussels get some of their nutrition from surface waters, Shawn is investigating whether their larvae do as well.