Protist-dominated hard substrate faunas thrive at the deepest ocean depths
Deep-sea hard substrates host faunal novelties and distinct evolutionary lineages. However, sessile organisms on rocks are difficult to sample and largely unknown at extreme hadal depths. Here, we report a deep hard-substrate fauna (9000 to 10,898 meters), comprising 32 species of six protist and metazoan phyla, most millimeter-sized and new to science, from the Kermadec and Mariana trenches, using the manned submersible Fendouzhe . We show that the filamentous organisms dominating these assemblages are heterotrophic foraminiferans, challenging the earlier chemolithoautotrophic hypothesis. Large-scale seafloor imaging and sampling suggest that similar protistan-dominated sessile communities thrive in seven hadal regions around Oceania. These faunas open new perspectives on biodiversity at the deepest ocean depths and unveil widespread, but previously unrecognized, carbon hotspots in global hadal trenches.
Authors
- Yustian Rovi Alfiansah (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1640-9834)
- Daniel Leduc (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5310-9198)
- Qian He (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4891-3581)
- Andrea Waeschenbach (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8571-9345)
- Li DeE
- Mengran Du (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8862-5256)
- Xikun Song (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3335-0029)
- Yike Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5970-3876)
- Hailong Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8951-7094)
- Shuangquan Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1661-8457)
- Hengchao Xu
- Huijie Guo
- Thomas Schwaha
- Ashley Rowden
- Zhaoming Gao
- Xiaotong Peng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5823-3128)
- Dennis P. Gordon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9398-996X)
- Liang Meng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2642-8446)
- Zizhu Wang
- Shun Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-1079)
- Bernhard Ruthensteiner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2205-7943)
- Xiaolan Lin
- Andrew J. Gooday (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5661-7371)
Institutions
- University of Vienna (AT)
- Natural History Museum (GB)
- Xiamen University (CN)
- National Oceanography Centre (GB)
- National Space Science Center (CN)
- Institute of Software (CN)
- Aerospace Information Research Institute (CN)
- Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (DE)
- Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering (CN)
- National Nuclear Energy Agency of Indonesia (ID)
- Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) (CN)
- BGI Research (CN)
- National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NZ)
- Hainan Tropical Ocean University (CN)
- Tsinghua University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science
- Published
- 2026-05-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aea7086
- Primary Topic
- Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00