Mammoth grazers on the ocean's minuteness: a review of selective feeding using mucous meshes.

ABSTRACT: Mucous-mesh grazers (pelagic tunicates and thecosome pteropods) are common in oceanic waters and efficiently capture, consume and repackage particles many orders of magnitude smaller than themselves. They feed using an adhesive mucous mesh to capture prey particles from ambient seawater. Historically, their grazing process has been characterized as non-selective, depending only on the size of the prey particle and the pore dimensions of the mesh. The purpose of this review is to reverse this assumption by reviewing recent evidence that shows mucous-mesh feeding can be selective. We focus on large planktonic microphages as a model of selective mucus feeding because of their important roles in the ocean food web: as bacterivores, prey for higher trophic levels, and exporters of carbon via mu

SUBMITTER: Conley KR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5966591 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature