Show threadMonikaBrightLabJul 26, 2023
If Endoriftia is indeed a #mixotroph it might explain why this symbiosis is that successful and widespread at vents. The escaped free-living symbionts seed the environment and enhance the probability that both partners find each other, which is crucial to establish the symbiosis for new host generations. Additionally it might help to reach also more distant vent sites and hosts
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Lukas VFN 🇪🇺Nov 12, 2022

Ocean microbes get their diet through a surprising mix of sources https://phys.org/news/2022-11-ocean-microbes-diet-sources.html Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-022-01250-5

Organisms that use a mix of strategies to provide #carbon are known as #mixotrophs. Most marine #plankton are mixotrophs. #Prochlorococcus may be more of a #mixotroph than it lets on. The #microbe may get as much as one-third of its carbon through consuming the dissolved remains of other dead #microbes.

Ocean microbes get their diet through a surprising mix of sources, study finds

One of the smallest and mightiest organisms on the planet is a plant-like bacterium known to marine biologists as Prochlorococcus. The green-tinted microbe measures less than a micron across, and its populations suffuse through the upper layers of the ocean, where a single teaspoon of seawater can hold millions of the tiny organisms.

Phys.org