Although the importance of meiofauna to marine Coull Romeyn….pdfVIP

MARINE ECOLOGY PROGRESS SERIES Vol. 114: 71-79. 1994 Published November 3 Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. Predation within meiofaunal communities: description and results of a rapid-freezing method of investigation Andrew D. Kennedy* Department of Biological Sciences, Hatherly Laboratories, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4PS. United Kingdom ABSTRACT. A technique for studying field interstitial meiofaunal predation is described. Tested on mud and sand communities in the Exe Estuary, southwest England, the methodology provided evi- dence for the complexity of field-based meiobenthic trophic interactions. Nematoda and Turbellaria were implicated in 2 types of predation (1)direct carnivory, whereby one meiofaunal individual was ingested by another; (2) internal predation, whereby small nematodes invaded the bodles of other meiofauna in a manner that might have been parasitism, carnlvory or scavenging. Prey items included nematodes, harpacticoid copepods, ostracods, annelids and halacarids. The freezing technique was evaluated against alternative methodologies for studying meiofaunal feeding interactions: advantages include directness (i.e. no use of an intermediate assay) and field pertinence (animals are fixed within seconds of in situ sampling). However, the technique is time-consuming and only provides a snapshot of each predatory interaction, i.e the subsequent outcome can only be assumed. Photogr