Anthropogenic impacts are increasingly affecting deep‐sea environments, including seafloor sediment disturbances by bottom trawling and seafloor mining. Fieldwork in the ‘Resilience Of Benthic Ecosystems to Sedimentation’ (ROBES) project were conducted in 2018–2020 on the 400 m‐deep Chatham Rise crest, eastern Aotearoa New Zealand. Water column turbidity data, sediment traps on near‐seabed moorings and benthic landers and surf...

Summary Symbiotic bacteria of the genus Verminephrobacter ( Betaproteobacteria ) were detected in the nephridia of 19 out of 23 investigated earthworm species ( Oligochaeta : Lumbricidae ) by 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). While all four Lumbricus species and three out of five Aporrectodea species were densely colonized by a mono‐species culture of Verminephrobacter , other earth...