Shallow-water chemosymbiotic clams are a globally significant and previously overlooked carbon sink
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Chemosynthetic animal symbioses are common in marine ecosystems but remain overlooked as contributors to global carbon fixation. We show that the shallow-water thyasirid clam Thyasira tokunagai , dominant in Yellow Sea sediments, harbors sulfur-oxidizing Sedimenticola symbionts with remarkably consistent genomic contents and functionality across the region, showing active Calvin cycle gene expression and close-knit host-symbiont metabolic integration. Field surveys demonstrated densities up to 2015 individuals·m□ 2 , while radiocarbon tracing revealed assimilation rate constants (0.002–0.005 day□¹) peaking at 14.8°C. Spatial modelling combining abundance and temperature estimated a carbon fixation of 0.89 Tg C·yr□¹ in Yellow Sea, equivalent to 43% of the annual sedimental C burial from the Chinese coast. The species complex that includes T. tokunagai is widely distributed and constitutes a globally significant, previously unaccounted blue carbon sink. Our findings underscore the crucial role of shallow-water chemosymbioses in carbon cycling, emphasising the importance of incorporating them into climate models and conservation strategies focused on carbon sequestration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".