Ref ID : 486
Hartmut Arndt, Hans Gude, Miroslav Macek, and Karl Otto Rothhaupt; Chemostats used to model the microbial food web: evidence for the feedback effect of herbivorous metazoans. Arch.Hydrobiol.Beih. 37:187-194, 1992
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Five successive chemostats of algae (Monoraphidium)/bacteria, a heterotophic flagellate (Spumella), and a rotifer (Brachionus) were combined according to a trophic cascade in order to test the hypothesis that the main flux of DOC from phytoplankton to bacteria is via egestion and excretion by herbivores rather than via exudated DOC from intact algae. Laboratory experiments revealed that bacteria and protozoans remained at low concentrations and metabolic activities until the algae were damaged by rotifer grazing. In the last chemostat where rotifers had been removed microbes grew up even more indicating both fuelling and grazing of microbes by rotifers. Evidence is presented that grazing activity of herbivores should be considered as an important souce of microbial nutrition.