Hydrocarbons of antarctic midwater organisms

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Hydrocarbons have been isolated from most major biomass species of zooplankton and fish in an Antarctic mesopelagic community. Unlike the odd-carbon preference of aliphatic hydrocarbons which typifies terrestrial plants and temperate marine organisms, even carbon chain-length paraffins predominate in 80% of the Antarctic species analyzed. Although the ultimate source of these even carbon n-alkanes cannot be determined from our study, the dominance of these compounds suggests an unusual biochemical pathway may be responsible for their synthesis in this ecosystem.