The WormFEST project kicks off!

Funded by the Research Council of Norway (Norges forskningsråd) the WormFEST project is led by Mari Heggernes Eilertsen a researcher at the Department of Biological Sciences, UiB and part of the leader group at the Centre for Deep Sea Research. Mari and her collaborative team are diving deep into the hidden ecosystems of the Arctic mid-ocean ridges to better understand the biodiversity, community dynamics and ecosystem functioning of these unique environments.

Worm forests are vibrant communities formed by millions of tubeworms (each one just a few millimetres thick and around 20-30 centimetres long) that create dense, 3D structures, comparable to the trees in a forest, where many other animals also like to live. Incredibly, the tubeworms have no mouth, no digestive tract and no eyes! They live in symbiosis with bacteria and rely on chemical energy.

Recent exploration of the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridges and adjacent continental margins have revealed many new vent and seep sites hosting worm forests, but the worm forest ecosystem has only been characterized from a few sites. The main objective of the 4-year WormFEST project is to characterize the diversity, community composition and ecosystem functioning of worm forests in select Arctic deep-sea hydrothermal vents and cold seep locations, providing critical baseline knowledge about these unique ecosystems.

The WormFEST project will be central to the activities of the CBE Arctic Team, a research team at the University of Bergen focusing on chemosynthesis-based ecosystems in the Arctic deep sea. The work is being undertaken in collaboration with the University Museum of Bergen, The Arctic University of Norway (UiT), Universidade de Aveiro, CIIMAR and FSU Jena.

For more information on the WormFEST project and chemosynthesis-based ecosystems (CBEs), head to the CBE Arctic homepage.