Rapid scavenging of jellyfish carcasses reveals the importance of gelatinous material to deep-sea food webs

Jellyfish blooms are common in many oceans, and anthropogenic changes appear to have increased their magnitude in some regions. Although mass falls of jellyfish carcasses have been observed recently at the deep seafloor, the dense necrophage aggregations and rapid consumption rates typical for vertebrate carrion have not been documented. This has led to a paradigm of limited energy transfer to higher trophic levels at jelly falls relative to vertebrate organic falls. We show from baited camera deployments in the Norwegian deep sea that dense aggregations of deep-sea scavengers (more than 1000 animals at peak densities) can rapidly form at jellyfish baits and consume entire jellyfish carcasses in 2.5 h. We also show that scavenging rates on jellyfish are not significantly different from fish carrion of similar mass, and reveal that scavenging communities typical for the NE Atlantic bathyal zone, including the Atlantic hagfish, galatheid crabs, decapod shrimp and lyssianasid amphipods, co...水母暴发（Jellyfish blooms）在全球多数海域均较为常见，而人为活动引发的环境改变似乎已在部分区域加剧了其暴发规模。尽管近期已有研究在深海海底（deep seafloor）观测到大量水母尸体沉降事件，但脊椎动物腐尸（vertebrate carrion）所典型具备的密集食腐动物集群与快速消耗速率，尚未在水母尸沉降（jelly falls）场景中被记录。这使得学界形成了一种认知范式：相较于脊椎动物有机质沉降，水母尸沉降向更高营养级传递的能量十分有限。我们通过在挪威海域深海布设的诱饵摄像装置（baited camera deployments）研究发现，水母诱饵处可快速形成密集的深海食腐动物（deep-sea scavengers）集群（峰值密度可达千余只个体），并能在2.5小时内将整具水母尸体完全消耗。研究同时表明，水母腐尸的食腐速率与相近质量的鱼类腐尸并无显著差异；此外还揭示，东北大西洋半深海带（NE Atlantic bathyal zone）典型的食腐群落——包括大西洋盲鳗（Atlantic hagfish）、铠甲虾（galatheid crabs）、十足目虾类（decapod shrimp）以及俪钩虾科（lyssianasid）端足类（amphipods）——共同……