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The World of Protozoa, Rotifera, Nematoda and Oligochaeta

Ref ID : 122

Peter L. Starkweather and John J. Gilbert; Feeding in the rotifer Brachionus calyciflorus. II. Effect of food density on feeding rates using Euglena gracilis and Rhodototula glutinis. Oecologia (Berlin) 28:133-139, 1977

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The laboratory feeding behavior of Brachionus calyciflorus varies depending upon the type of food cell available in suspension. When feeding on the yeast Rhodotorula glutinis, rotifers show a continuous increase in ingestion with increased cell density between 0.01 and 1000 ug dry weight ml-1. Effective clearance rates drop from ca. 50 ul animal-1 hr-1 to less than 0.5 ul animal-1 hr-1 over this food density range. When feeding on Euglena gracilis, B. calyciflorus ingestion rates are constant between 1.0 and 100 ug ml-1 of available food, averaging close to 25 ng animal-1 hr-1. The decrease in clearance rate is more striking than with R. glutinis, dropping from 45 ul animal-1 hr-1 at 0.1 ug ml-1 to 0.13 ul animal-1 hr-1 at 100 ug ml-1. Differences between the patterns obtained with the two food types indicate fundamental dissimilarities in the feeding behavior of this rotifer species when presented with these different foods.