Origins and Evolutionary Flexibility of Chemosynthetic Symbionts From Deep-Sea Animals

Funding

We thank Antje Boetius and Elva Escobar for providing sponge samples, and the captain and crew of the RV Meteor and ROV Quest (expedition M67/2) for support with work at sea. Thanks to Thomas Dahlgren for helping to sample Raricirrus beryli, to Gordon Paterson for help in identification, and to Helena Wiklund for providing some of the samples. We also thank Silke Wetzel, Lisa Drews, Kay Simmack, Viola Beier, and Nicole Roediger for excellent technical assistance. We very much appreciate the insightful comments of two reviewers, which helped us to improve this manuscript. This work was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (CW), and an EU Early Stage Training fellowship, MarM-icEST (CV).