Limits to the sensitivity of living benthic foraminifera to pore water carbon isotope anomalies in methane vent environments

Abstract

Episodic 13C depletions in the carbon isotopic composition of benthic foraminiferal tests preserved in the stratigraphic record have been interpreted as an active incorporation of methane-derived carbon. Understanding the extent to which these isotope excursions reflect basin-wide fluxes of methane carbon to bottom waters versus a local supply of methane carbon within the sediments in which benthic foraminifera live, or a postmortem diagenetic imprint is critical to the interpretation of δ13C paleoceanographic proxies. Here we evaluate the impact of chemical gradients measured in pore waters adjacent to active methane vents on carbon assimilation by living benthic foraminifera and show that those living near methane vents do not assimilate the distinctly 13C depleted methane-derived dissolved inorganic carbon into their tests from the pore water in which they were found. Our observations can be explained by the recently articulated physiological limits imposed on deep-sea fauna by low-oxygen and high-pCO2 environments. Understanding the importance of the different processes involved in the observed disequilibrium between the carbon isotopic composition of the benthic forams and the pore waters where they were found has important implications on the reliability of carbon isotopic composition of benthic foraminifera for paleoceanographic reconstructions. In particular, the observation on the inhospitability of these environments for benthic foraminifera at least for reproduction and growth raises the issue on the overprint either in the late adult stages of foraminifera that grew in a different neighboring environment or during early diagenesis in these geochemically active environments.