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Food Substrates And Digestive Capabilitites Of Marine Deposit Feeders, Lawrence M. Mayer

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

Deposit feeders play several important roles in determining whether organic material is demineralized or buried. These animals function to make surfaces available for microbial growth and move particles both horizontally and vertically within the seabed at a pace that far exceeds sedimentation. The central problem in understanding deposit feeders is to identify the materials that they utilize and to determine the sources of those materials. The interdisciplinary approach of this project is to combine a chemical reactor theory of digestion with measurements of the processing of enzymatically available amino acids, focusing on rates of hydrolysis in, and absorption from, the …