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The relative importance of bacteria and algae as food sources for crustacean zooplankton
Author(s) -
Wylie John L.,
Currie David J.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
limnology and oceanography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 197
eISSN - 1939-5590
pISSN - 0024-3590
DOI - 10.4319/lo.1991.36.4.0708
Subject(s) - crustacean , picoplankton , trophic level , biology , algae , zooplankton , ecology , plankton , biomass (ecology) , bacteria , phytoplankton , nutrient , genetics
There is increasing evidence that the main role of the microbial loop in aquatic food webs is rapid remineralization of organic nutrients with little C being transferred to higher trophic levels. There is also evidence, however, that the transfer of C from algae to crustaceans is equally inefficient. This finding suggests that simultaneous determination of C flow from both bacteria and algae to crustaceans is necessary to determine if bacteria might represent an important source of C for higher trophic levels. Our data suggest that when copepods dominate a crustacean community bacteria and picoplankton contribute insignificant amounts of C to crustaceans. When cladocerans predominate, the significance of these trophic links increases. At our study site, up to 16–21% of the C input to crustaceans may have originated from bacteria and picoplankton when cladocerans were present in large numbers. For some of our analyses, percentage of algal or heterotrophic bacterial C transferred per hour to crustaceans was of a similar magnitude, which suggests that if bacterial and algal biomass is similar much of the C flow to crustaceans could originate from bacteria.