Heterotrophic eukaryotes show a slow-fast continuum, not a gleaner-exploiter trade-off.

ABSTRACT: Gleaners and exploiters (opportunists) are organisms adapted to feeding in nutritionally poor and rich environments, respectively. A trade-off between these two strategies-a negative relationship between the rate at which organisms can acquire food and ingest it-is a critical assumption in many ecological models. Here, we evaluate evidence for this trade-off across a wide range of heterotrophic eukaryotes from unicellular nanoflagellates to large mammals belonging to both aquatic and terrestrial realms. Using data on the resource acquisition and ingestion rates in >500 species, we find no evidence of a trade-off across species. Instead, there is a positive relationship between maximum clearance rate and maximum ingestion rate. The positive relationship is not a result of lumping together d

SUBMITTER: Kiorboe T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7547223 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature