Animal Sciences Commons^™

Body Size And Food Size In Freshwater Zooplankton, Kenneth Bogdan, John Gilbert

Dartmouth Scholarship

We used double-label liquid scintilation techniques to measure the efficiencies with which eight different sized zooplankton species ingested four celtypes relative to a standard celtype(Chlamydomonas). Efficiency ratios (ERs:clearancerateonceltypeX . clearancerateonChlam- ydomonas) on the three ultraplankton (<5 Iam in diameter) cels (a coccoid bacterium and the algae Synechococcus and Nannochloris) varied greatly among zooplankton species but were not correlated with zooplankton bodylength. Variation in ERs on a muchlarger(17x 14 um) algalcel(Cryptomonas)was only partly explained by zooplankton body length.