High dietary quality of non-toxic cyanobacteria for a benthic grazer and its implications for the control of cyanobacterial biofilms

BMC Ecology

Research Article

Sophie Groendahl¹  Patrick Fink² 

[1] Cologne Biocenter, Workgroup Aquatic Chemical Ecology, University of Cologne, Zuelpicher Strasse 47b, 50674, Koeln, Germany;Cologne Biocenter, Workgroup Aquatic Chemical Ecology, University of Cologne, Zuelpicher Strasse 47b, 50674, Koeln, Germany;Institute for Zoomorphology and Cell Biology, Heinrich-Heine University of Duesseldorf, Universitaetsstrasse 1, 40225, Duesseldorf, Germany;

关键词: Herbivore;    Balanced diet hypothesis;    Nutrients;    Nitrogen;    Phosphorus;    Compensatory feeding;    Benthic algae;    Lymnaea stagnalis;    Fatty acids;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12898-017-0130-3

 received in 2016-12-05, accepted in 2017-05-09,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMass occurrences of cyanobacteria frequently cause detrimental effects to the functioning of aquatic ecosystems. Consequently, attempts haven been made to control cyanobacterial blooms through naturally co-occurring herbivores. Control of cyanobacteria through herbivores often appears to be constrained by their low dietary quality, rather than by the possession of toxins, as also non-toxic cyanobacteria are hardly consumed by many herbivores. It was thus hypothesized that the consumption of non-toxic cyanobacteria may be improved when complemented with other high quality prey. We conducted a laboratory experiment in which we fed the herbivorous freshwater gastropod Lymnaea stagnalis single non-toxic cyanobacterial and unialgal diets or a mixed diet to test if diet-mixing may enable these herbivores to control non-toxic cyanobacterial mass abundances.ResultsThe treatments where L. stagnalis were fed non-toxic cyanobacteria and a mixed diet provided a significantly higher shell and soft-body growth rate than the average of all single algal, but not the non-toxic cyanobacterial diets. However, the increase in growth provided by the non-toxic cyanobacteria diets could not be related to typical determinants of dietary quality such as toxicity, nutrient stoichiometry or essential fatty acid content.ConclusionsThese results strongly contradict previous research which describes non-toxic cyanobacteria as a low quality food resource for freshwater herbivores in general. Our findings thus have strong implications to gastropod-cyanobacteria relationships and suggest that freshwater gastropods may be able to control mass occurrences of benthic non-toxic cyanobacteria, frequently observed in eutrophied water bodies worldwide.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2017