The fidelity of paleomagnetic records carried by magnetosome chains

Abstract

Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB), which use aligned chains of magnetosomes (magnetic crystals) as a navigation tool, are found in a wide range of modern day marine, river and lacustrine environments and their fossilized remains are being increasing recognized in geological records. Despite an increasing realization that biogenically derived magnetic particles may play a key role in sedimentary magnetizations, little is known about the influence that they may have on the fidelity of paleomagnetic recordings. Using cultured Magnetospirillum magneticum strain AMB-1, we have conducted simple 2D (i.e., zero-inclination) deposition experiments to assess the efficiency with which magnetosome chains align along magnetic field lines and the implications that this has for paleomagnetic records. Our results indicate that the natural remanent magnetization (NRM) acquired by deposited MTB is near linear with applied field (0–120 μT), but that NRM acquisition does not perfectly follow the assumed linear trend and over a six-fold increase in applied field only a factor ∼5.5 increase in NRM intensity is observed (i.e., ∼9% lower than the assumed trend). Both anhysteretic remanent magnetization (ARM) and saturation isothermal remanent magnetization (SIRM) normalized relative paleointensities (RPIs) can successfully recover field strength variations under identical situations. When the MTB concentration of the initial solution is varied (up to a factor 8), NRM carried by MTB responds in the expected fashion (i.e., a doubling of bacteria produces a doubling of NRM intensity). Both ARM and SIRM, however, do not respond to as expected: A doubling of concentration corresponds to an increase of ∼1.76 in SIRM intensity and an increase of only ∼1.63 in ARM intensity. Both are influenced by magnetostatic interactions that arise from the close packing of bacterial cells or subchain interactions within a single bacterial cell. First-order reversal curve (FORC) diagrams, however, are too insensitive to indicate the presence of paleomagnetically relevant magnetic interactions. Remanence based methods (i.e., the ARM ratio) are more appropriate to detect such interactions.