MICROBIAL ABUNDANCE AND DIVERSITY IN SUBSURFACE LOWER OCEANIC CRUST AT ATLANTIS BANK, SOUTHWEST INDIAN RIDGE

International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 360 drilled Hole U1473A at Atlantis Bank, an oceanic core complex on the Southwest Indian Ridge, with the aim of recovering representative samples of the lower oceanic crust. Recovered cores were primarily gabbro and olivine gabbro. These mineralogies may host serpentinization reactions that have the potential to support microbial life within the recovered rocks or at greater depths beneath Atlantis Bank. We quantified prokaryotic cells and analyzed microbial community composition for rock samples obtained from Hole U1473A, and conducted nutrient addition experiments to assess if nutrient supply influences the composition of microbial communities. Microbial abundance was low (≤10 4 cells cm −3 ) but positively correlated to the presence of veins in rocks within some depth ranges. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the rocks downhole (alternating stretches of relatively unaltered gabbros and more significantly altered and fractured rocks), the strength of the positive correlations between rock characteristics and microbial abundances was weaker when all depths were considered. Microbial community diversity varied at each depth analyzed. Surprisingly, addition of simple organic acids, ammonium, phosphate, or ammonium plus phosphate in nutrient addition experiments did not affect microbial diversity or methane production in nutrient addition incubation cultures over 60 weeks. The work presented here from Site U1473A, which is representative of basement rock samples at ultraslow spreading ridges and the usually inaccessible lower oceanic crust, increases our understanding of microbial life present in this rarely studied environment and provides an analog for basement below ocean world systems such as Enceladus. IMPORTANCE The lower oceanic crust below the seafloor is one of the most poorly-explored habitats on Earth. The rocks from the Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR) are similar to rock environments on other ocean-bearing planets and moons. Studying this environment helps us increase our understanding of life in other subsurface rocky environments in our solar system that we do not yet have the capability to access. During an expedition to the SWIR, we drilled 780 meters into lower oceanic crust and collected over 50 rock samples to count the number of resident microbes and determine who they are. We also selected some of these rocks for an experiment where we provided them with different nutrients to explore energy and carbon sources preferred for growth. We found that the number of resident microbes and community structure varied with depth. Additionally, added nutrients did not shape the microbial diversity in a predictable manner.

In situ lower crustal accretion by melt sill injection revealed by seismic layering

Oceanic crust is formed at mid-ocean spreading centres by a combination of magmatic, tectonic and hydrothermal processes. The crust formed by magmatic process consists of an upper crust generally composed of basaltic dikes and lava flows and a lower crust presumed to mainly contain homogeneous gabbro whereas that by tectonic process can be very heterogeneous and may even contain mantle rocks. Although the formation and evolution of the upper crust are well known from geophysical and drilling results, those for the lower crust remain a matter of debate. Using a full waveform inversion method applied to wide-angle seismic data, here we report the presence of layering in the lower oceanic crust formed at the slow spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge, ~7-12 Ma in age, revealing that the lower crust is formed mainly by in situ cooling and crystallisation of melt sills at different depths by the injection of magma from the mantle. These layers are 400-600 m thick with alternate high and low velocities, with ± 100-200 m/s velocity variation, and cover over a million-year old crust, suggesting that the crustal accretion by melt sill intrusions beneath the ridge axis is a stable process. We also find that the upper crust is ~400 m thinner than that from conventional travel-time analysis. Taken together, these discoveries suggest that the magmatism plays more important roles in the crustal accretion process at slow spreading ridges than previously realised, and that in-situ lower crustal accretion is the main process for the formation of lower oceanic crust.