About the Authors
- Karine Olu
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* E-mail: karine.olu@ifremer.fr
Affiliation Département Etude des Ecosystèmes Profonds (DEEP), IFREMER, BP70, 29280 Plouzané, France
- Erik E. Cordes
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Affiliation Biology Department, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
- Charles R. Fisher
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Affiliation Biology Department, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America
- James M. Brooks
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Affiliation TDI-Brooks International, College Station, Texas, United States of America
- Myriam Sibuet
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Affiliation Institut Océanographique, Paris, France
- Daniel Desbruyères
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Affiliation Département Etude des Ecosystèmes Profonds (DEEP), IFREMER, BP70, 29280 Plouzané, France
Competing Interests
Total oil company has partially funded the work in the Gulf of Guinea (collaboration Ifremer-Total: program “Biozaire”). The company TDI-Brooks International was responsible for the collections of the scientific seep samples from the Nigerian margin. The funding from these commercial sources does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: EEC CRF MS. Performed the experiments: KO EEC CRF. Analyzed the data: KO. Wrote the paper: KO. Contributed to writing the paper (corrections): EEC CRF. Supplied some of the W African collections analyzed and was the lead on the deep water Chemo project in the GoM, where a bunch of the original data for those analyses came from: JMB. Project leader for Congo and Gabon margins: MS. Leader of ChEss project “Atlantic Equatorial Belt communities”: DD.