The Complexity of Life Cindy Lee Van Dover College of William &
Mary The sea bed might seem simple enough. Dead plants, animals
and microorganisms combine with wind- and rain-eroded soil dust,
and rain down from sunlit surface waters to accumulate on the
sea floor. The descent of dead material is itself a complex
process. Each bit of tissue cycling through midwater organisms
loses a little more of its nutritive value during each cycle.
This organic material is distributed unevenly over the sea
floor. The result is a mosaic of habitats with subtle
variations. It is this rain of surface-derived organic material
upon which abyssal (very deep-sea) organisms eke out a living,
generating additional micro patches of varying habitat quality
as each one burrows or feeds. The volume of animals in a few
square meters of mud might best be measured in teaspoonfuls and
mere tens of individuals. Though sparse, the animals that do
live in the globally vast deep-sea muds are diverse,
representing millions of species, each ada