My paleoecologic work focuses on the reconstruction of biologic
interactions in fossil chemosynthetic ecosystems. A wood-mollusk assemblage
from Eocene deep-water sediments in Washington State, USA, was reconstructed as
one ecosystem in which the mollusks were either directly or indirectly
dependant on the wood as their source of food.
Several food chains could be reconstructed (see figure): shipworms bored into the wood by digesting it, chitons, limpets and other small snails grazed on wood-degrading microbes, and all these mollusks served as food for predators and scavengers. The mussels lived in symbiosis with sulfur-loving bacteria and depended on the wood in an indirect way: the shipworms excrete large amounts of fecal pellets that are rich in organic matter. The bacterial degradation of these fecal pellets releases sulfides, which in turn are utilized by the sulfur-loving endosymbionts of the mussels.
Kiel, S. and Goedert, J.L. 2006. A wood-fall association from Late Eocene deep-water sediments of Washington State, USA. Palaios 21: 548-556.