Éditeur(s) : Elsevier Science Bv
Résumé : Fluid escape structures on the Nile Deep Sea Fan were investigated during the MEDIFLUX MIMES expedition in 2004. Mud volcanoes, pockmarks and authigenic carbonate structures were surveyed for the first time with a high-resolution deep-towed 75 kHz sidescan sonar and a 2-8 kHz Chirp sediment echosounder. In combination with existing multibeam bathymetry and detailed seafloor in situ geological observations, these new data allowed detailed seep analyses. About 60 gas flares were detected acoustically in the water column from the sidescan sonar raw data at water depths from 770 to 1700 m. These gas flares coincide at the seabed with 1) the centres of the mud volcanoes where mud is also extruded, 2) the borders of the mud volcanoes where the emitted gases contribute to the precipitation of authigenic carbonates, and 3) to the edges of broad sheets of authigenic carbonates. Subsurface sediments are commonly disturbed by ascending fluids throughout the delta, with an abundance of seep-related carbonate structures on the seafloor. The feeder channels below mud volcanoes, similar to the gas conduits below the widespread carbonate crust structures and pockmarks, are relatively narrow and, for the vast majority of them, do not exceed a few metres in diameter. The seeps on the Nile Deep Sea Fan clearly follow lineations on the seafloor that we can relate to faults. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Marine Geology (0025-3227) (Elsevier Science Bv), 2010-09 , Vol. 275 , N. 1-4 , P. 1-19

Droits : 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00013/12457/9766.pdf
DOI:10.1016/j.margeo.2010.04.003
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00013/12457/

Droits : info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00175/28649/27076.pdf
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00175/28649/

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer Verlag
Résumé : International audience
Standard microbial evolutionary ontology is organized according to a nested hierarchy of entities at various levels of biological organization. It typically detects and defines these entities in relation to the most stable aspects of evolutionary processes, by identifying lineages evolving by a process of vertical inheritance from an ancestral entity. However, recent advances in microbiology indicate that such an ontology has important limitations. The various dynamics detected within microbiological systems reveal that a focus on the most stable entities (or features of entities) over time inevitably underestimates the extent and nature of microbial diversity. These dynamics are not the outcome of the process of vertical descent alone. Other processes, often involving causal interactions between entities from distinct levels of biological organisation, or operating at different time scales, are responsible not only for the destabilisation of pre-existing entities, but also for the emergence and stabilisation of novel entities in the microbial world. In this article we consider microbial entities as more or less stabilised functional wholes, and sketch a network-based ontology that can represent a diverse set of processes including, for example, as well as phylogenetic relations, interactions that stabilise or destabilise the interacting entities, spatial relations, ecological connections, and genetic exchanges. We use this pluralistic framework for evaluating (i) the existing ontological assumptions in evolution (e.g. whether currently recognized entities are adequate for understanding the causes of change and stabilisation in the microbial world), and (ii) for identifying hidden ontological kinds, essentially invisible from within a more limited perspective. We propose to recognize additional classes of entities that provide new insights into the structure of the microbial world, namely ``processually equivalent'' entities, ``processually versatile'' entities, and ``stabilized'' entities.
ISSN: 0169-3867

hal-01544796
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01544796
DOI : 10.1007/s10539-012-9350-2