All you can eat: the functional response of the cold-water coral Desmophyllum dianthus feeding on krill and copepods

PeerJ

article

Juan Höfer¹  Humberto E. González¹  Jürgen Laudien³  Gertraud M. Schmidt³  Verena Häussermann⁴  Claudio Richter³ 

[1] Instituto de Ciencias Marinas y Limnológicas, Universidad Austral de Chile;Centro FONDAP de Investigación en Dinámica de Ecosistemas Marinos de Altas Latitudes;Alfred-Wegener-Institut;Facultad de Recursos Naturales, Escuela de Ciencias del Mar, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso;Huinay Scientific Field Station;Fachbereich Biologie/Chemie, Universität Bremen

关键词: Desmophyllum dianthus;    Cold-water coral;    Functional response;    Coral feeding;    Euphausia vallentini;    Calanoides patagoniensis;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.5872

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

The feeding behavior of the cosmopolitan cold-water coral (CWC) Desmophyllum dianthus (Cnidaria: Scleractinia) is still poorly known. Its usual deep distribution restricts direct observations, and manipulative experiments are so far limited to prey that do not occur in CWC natural habitat. During a series of replicated incubations, we assessed the functional response of this coral feeding on a medium-sized copepod (Calanoides patagoniensis) and a large euphausiid (Euphausia vallentini). Corals showed a Type I functional response, where feeding rate increased linearly with prey abundance, as predicted for a tentaculate passive suspension feeder. No significant differences in feeding were found between prey items, and corals were able to attain a maximum feeding rate of 10.99 mg C h−1, which represents an ingestion of the 11.4% of the coral carbon biomass per hour. These findings suggest that D. dianthus is a generalist zooplankton predator capable of exploiting dense aggregations of zooplankton over a wide prey size-range.

【 授权许可】

CC BY