Feeding response of the tropical copepod Acartia erythraea to short-term thermal stress: more animal-derived food was consumed

PeerJ

article

Simin Hu¹  Sheng Liu¹  Lingli Wang¹  Tao Li¹  Hui Huang¹ 

[1] Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Bio-resources and Ecology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences;University of Chinese Academy of Sciences;Tropical Marine Biological Research Station in Hainan, Chinese Academy of Sciences

关键词: Feeding response;    Thermal pollution;    Tropical coastal ecosystem;    Copepod;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.6129

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

The objective of this study was to explore the feeding response of tropical copepods to short-term thermal shock and provide insight into the potential impact of coastal power plants on the trophic dynamics of tropical coastal ecosystems. Feeding experiments were conducted at three different temperatures (29 °C, 33 °C, and 35 °C) using the copepod Acartia erythraea, collected from Sanya Bay, China. The grazing rate of A. erythraea decreased dramatically in the high temperature treatment. Analysis of 18S rDNA clone libraries revealed that the diet of copepods from different treatments was mainly comprised of diatoms, metazoans, and protozoans; A. erythraea exhibited an obvious feeding preference shift with temperature, with a change from a diatom-dominated diet at 29 °C to a metazoan-dominated diet at 35 °C, and the omnivory index shifted from 0.1 to 2.84 correspondingly. Furthermore, A. erythraea showed a positive feeding response to plant food (i.e., phytoplankton and land plants) in the control treatment (29 °C), but a positive response to animal prey (i.e., metazoans and protozoans) at temperatures exceeding 33 °C, as evaluated by the Ivlev’s selectivity index. Our results suggest that copepods could regulate their food intake by considering their energy demands when exposed to short-term thermal stress, which might influence the pathway of materials moving up the trophic system. However, further studies are required to elucidate the effects of elevated temperature on feeding of different organisms in order to predict the influence of thermal pollution on the food web of tropical coastal ecosystems.

【 授权许可】

CC BY