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Predation Thresholds In Marine Microbial Communities Applied To Environments With Low Prey Abundances, Bonnie Bailey
Predation Thresholds In Marine Microbial Communities Applied To Environments With Low Prey Abundances, Bonnie Bailey
OES Theses and Dissertations
Prokaryotes (Bacteria and Archaea) comprise the largest component of biomass in the world's oceans. Their abundances are controlled by resource availability, viral infections and protist grazing. Many pico- and nano-eukaryotic predators grow almost as quickly as their prey, and greatly increase in numbers as soon as their prey do, leading in tum to depletion in prokaryotes. It is still unclear however, as to what extent microbial predators are able to feed in low prey environments, most prominently in the largest biome on Earth, the deep sea (below l 000 m depth). It has been hypothesized that in low prey environments, …