A History Of Life

Whale-fall communities have been studied since the eighties, attracting ecologists and paleoecologists alike. Incredible findings of mouthless-worms sucking fat from whale bones and a variety of other invertebrates relying on chemiosymbiotic bacteria for food, shed light on ecosystems based on highly localized, ephemeral sources of food in a vast plain of small organic content such as the oceanic depths. However, while the deep water nectic and benthic assemblages associated with large whale carcasses are reasonably well-known, very little is published on whale-fall communities from shelfal depths. What shallow-water species would partecipate to such a banquet? Are there any shelfal specialists to whale-fall resources? What relationships with deep-sea forms?