Insight into deep-sea life - Cibicidoides pachyderma substrate and pH-dependent behaviour following disturbance

Independent of pH, growth was only observed in specimens that lived within an agglutinated cyst or infaunal. A solid thick cyst covered the specimens of the pH 7.4 experiment throughout the experiment and possibly restricted water exchange between the in-cyst water and the surrounding artificial bottom water mass. We suggest that a more fragile and possibly more porous sedimentary envelope may, at least temporally, have covered the infaunal specimens under pH 8 but no evidence for this was found upon termination of the experiment.