New paper about hydrothermal vent shrimps

After a few quiet months of cancelled conferences, postponed cruises, and home working, I’m very happy to share some news about a new publication. This paper, just published in Royal Society Open Science, is the output of Pierre Methou‘s thesis at Ifremer, that focused on emblematic, symbiont-bearing, hydrothermal vent shrimps Rimicaris spp. Here, we combined integrative taxonomy (morphological analyses, DNA sequencing) and ecological markers (stable isotopes of C, N and S) to re-examine ontogenic niche shifts and interspecific differences in resource use among R. exoculata and R. chacei. It turns out that while both species transition from photosynthesis-based nutrition towards a chemosynthetic diet after settlement, there is consistent niche segregation between the two species throughout their life cycle. Those results provide a good illustration of the identification issues persisting in deep-sea ecosystems and the importance of integrative taxonomy in providing an accurate view of fundamental aspects of the biology and ecology of species inhabiting these environments.

Read more (for free) at https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200837