Amanda Kahn is an assistant professor of invertebrate zoology at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and San Jose State University, California, USA. Her research aims to explore how benthic invertebrates contribute to their ecosystems and the timescales they operate on, with a special focus on the deep sea. Deep-sea communities are often food-starved, relying heavily on imported nutrients either as material sinking from the surface or arriving via lateral currents. Suspension feeders — animals that capture food particles suspended in the water column — create important pathways that link food energy from microbes in the water column with animals on the seafloor. Dr. Kahn’s research focuses on one group of suspension feeders that is very successful in the deep sea: the sponges (Phylum Porifera). Through their feeding activity, sponges act as oases of nutrients in the food-poor deep ocean, moving dissolved and particulate carbon and nitrogen between the water column and seafloor communities.
