CORPSE ECOSYSTEMS

Corpses as ecosystems? No jokes! Don't think of human corpses! Think decomposition.

When a large animal like a wild buffalo ,a sambar, giraffe or a zebra dies in the forest, or a
cattle on the road, the carcass (dead bodies) becomes an ecosystem- the starting point for
new sets of food chains and food webs, but with a difference. The process of decomposition
sustains this ecosystem. It’s easy to imagine this on land, but in oceans?
The corpse decay in oceans has a special name

Whale Fall
When whales die they are either washed up on the shore or they sink to the bottom of the
ocean. When the latter happens, its bonanza for those community of invertebrates and
microbes that live 1000-3000ft deep in ocean floors. At any given time they depend on the
detritus/organic material that slowly sink down to the bottom. So when a corpse arrives, its
celebration time for the bottom dwelling community. ( Image) The scavangers - hagfish,
sleeper sharks, rattail fish and amphipods- are the first to feed on the meaty part of the
carcass- muscles, visceral organs and its blubber, leaving only the skeleton remains. Feeding
at a rate of 40-End of feeding? No! Marine biologists lead by Dr Craig Smith have found that
a whale skeleton, depending on its age holds anywhere between 2-24 metric tonnes of oil in
its bones.
Yummy energy for hordes of polychaete worms, molluscs and unusual crustaceans
descending on the bony remains. Marine biologists have found these organisms to be unique
to whale fall. Of these – the bone-eating worm leads the show, while others feed on the
sediments around the whale skeleton. The Osedax or the bone-eating worm has no mouth,
stomach or gut, no eyes, no legs and the male is a tiny fella residing within the female. She
has beautiful red plumes; and root-like appendages, with symbiotic bacteria within to digest
the lipids. These appendages bore through the bones to reach the marrow where the symbiotic
bacteria breakdown the lipids and release energy to the worms. This can go on for at least
two years based on the size of the whale.
The holes drilled into the bone by the Osedax is like a door opening for the procession of
bacteria to move into the remains for their nourishment. The first to enter are the anaerobes to
be followed by the chemosynthetic sulphophilic bacteria. They appear as a yellow mat
covering the bony remains of the whales. The bacterial food web on the whale fall is unique;
about 200 sulphophilic species of bacteria have been found on whale bones. What’s more,
new ecological niches are seen with organisms that scavenge, prey on them or even form
symbiotic associations with them.
Marine biologists from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute report that the last stage
whale-fall community to be diverse with 190 different species of macroscopic communities
on a single corpse. They found that one whale-fall community lasted for 50 years!