Selective predation by a harpacticoid copepod on ciliates in phytotelmata: a laboratory experiment

Abstract

Copepods are the most numerous metazoans in water-filled phytotelmata formed by Heliconia and Calathea floral bracts in cloud forests of Cordillera de la Costa, Northern Venezuela. We estimated the potential effect of copepods on ciliate community structure in this habitat with a laboratory experiment. Predation effects of five life stages of a harpacticoid copepod on a mixed culture of five bacterivorous ciliate species were measured during a 48-hour incubation. The predation effect depended on copepod life stage and on ciliate prey species. The abundances of Colpoda inflata, Tetrahymena pyriformis, and Colpidium kleini were significantly reduced, the actual effect strongly depending on copepod developmental stage. No detectable predation was observed on Paramecium aurelia or Tachysoma pellionellum. The results suggest that predation by harpacticoid copepods is an important factor influencing ciliate community structure in phytotelmata.

Ice-on and ice-off dynamics of ciliates and metazooplankton in the Łuczański Canal (Poland)

“…It is well documented from both laboratory and field experiments that ciliates are a valuable, but still not appreciated, food resource for metazooplankton, including rotifers (Arndt 1993;Weisse and Frahm 2001;Ventelä et al 2002;Bielańska-Grajner et al 2011), cladocerans and copepods (e.g. Carrick et al 1991;Sanders and Wickham 1993;Wiackowski et al 1994;Zöllner et al 2003;Wiąckowski and Kocerba-Soroka 2017;Moore et al 2019), and fish larvae (Zingel et al 2019), due to the considerable contents of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and sterols (Sommer et al 2012;Makhutova et al 2013) as well as nitrogen and phosphorus (Martin-Creuzburg et al 2005). Thus, small ciliates may enrich the diet of consumers even when they constitute only a minor part of the carbon diet (Sommer et al 2012).…”

Ecological Study of the Active Ciliate Community from Bromeliads during the Humid Season in Different Types of Forests of the Mexican Neotropics

“…In Mexico, some studies regarding ciliates in bromeliads have been published under a perspective of alpha taxonomy in agroecosystems, montane cloud forests and different types of tropical vegetation in small areas of the country [7,11,20]. Other ecological factors such as the plant volume [16], canopy cover [22] and predators [23] were identified to play a role on the ciliate community structure in phytotelmata; however, it is more likely that stochastic processes are responsible for the ciliate community structure and composition in tank bromeliads.…”