Weisse Thomas, Lukić Dunja, Lu Xiaoteng
University of Innsbruck, Research Department for Limnology, Mondseestr. 9, A-5310 Mondsee, Austria.
J Plankton Res. 2021 Mar 17;43(2):288-299. doi: 10.1093/plankt/fbab017. eCollection 2021 Mar-Apr.
We studied the effect of volume in small containers (microcosms) on five common planktonic freshwater ciliates and three zooplankton species, namely sp., the calanoid copepod sp., and the cyclopoid copepod sp. We measured ciliate specific growth rates and their loss rates due to microcrustacean predation in short-term experiments. We hypothesized that container volume ranging from 10 to 200 mL would not affect the activity of our prey and predator species. We found that the response to volume was species-specific; growth rates of three ciliate species were sensitive to volume. However, the volume effect was not unequivocal because different timing of the microcosm experiments (block effects) may have caused random bias due to varying morphological and/or physiological conditions of the ciliates and their predators. For predator clearance rate, the volume effect was insignificant in the filter-feeding and but was significant for the predatory copepod , which was hampered in the smallest experimental containers. Total crustacean clearance rates averaged over all treatments appeared unaffected by predator species, while ciliate species significantly affected the results. Our growth and clearance rates are close to previous findings with the same or similar planktonic prey and predator species.
我们研究了小容器（微观世界）中的容积对五种常见的浮游淡水纤毛虫和三种浮游动物的影响，这三种浮游动物分别是 属物种、哲水蚤属桡足类 物种和剑水蚤属桡足类 物种。在短期实验中，我们测量了纤毛虫的特定生长率以及它们因小型甲壳动物捕食而导致的损失率。我们假设容积在10至200毫升之间的容器不会影响我们的猎物和捕食者物种的活动。我们发现对容积的反应具有物种特异性；三种纤毛虫物种的生长率对容积敏感。然而，容积效应并不明确，因为微观世界实验的不同时间安排（区组效应）可能由于纤毛虫及其捕食者不同的形态和/或生理条件而导致随机偏差。对于捕食者的清除率，容积效应在滤食性 和 中不显著，但对掠食性桡足类 显著，它在最小的实验容器中受到阻碍。所有处理的总甲壳动物清除率平均似乎不受捕食者物种的影响，而纤毛虫物种显著影响结果。我们的生长率和清除率与之前使用相同或相似浮游猎物和捕食者物种的研究结果相近。
