Worms bask in extreme temperatures

S. C. Cary (), T. Shank and J. Stein
Additional contact information
S. C. Cary: College of Marine Studies, University of Delaware
T. Shank: Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey
J. Stein: Diversa Corporation, 10665 Sorrento Valley Road

Nature, 1998, vol. 391, issue 6667, 545-546

Abstract: Abstract Temperature is one of the most important environmental factors that governs a species' distribution. Some highly specialized prokaryotes can grow at temperatures above 113 °C (ref. 1), but eukaryotes appear less versatile2 and do not normally occur above 55 °C. Here we show that a colony-dwelling polychaete worm, inhabiting deep-sea hydrothermal vent chimneys, regularly experiences temperatures above 80 °C and a thermal gradient of 60 °C or more over its body length.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35286 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:391:y:1998:i:6667:d:10.1038_35286

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35286

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().