Sponsor
Funding was provided by NSF-OCE 1851412 to Anne W. Thompson and NSF-OCE 1851537 and 2125408 to Kelly R. Sutherland.
Published In
Environmental Microbiology
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
1-3-2023
Subjects
Tunicates, Marine microorganisms -- Ecology, Microorganisms--Ecology
Abstract
Microbial mortality impacts the structure of food webs, carbon flow, and the interactions that create dynamic patterns of abundance across gradients in space and time in diverse ecosystems. In the oceans, estimates of microbial mortality by viruses, protists, and small zooplankton do not account fully for observations of loss, suggesting the existence of underappreciated mortality sources. We examined how ubiquitous mucous mesh feeders (i.e. gelatinous zooplankton) could contribute to microbial mortality in the open ocean. We coupled capture of live animals by blue-water diving to sequence-based approaches to measure the enrichment and selectivity of feeding by two coexisting mucous grazer taxa (pteropods and salps) on numerically dominant marine prokaryotes. We show that mucous mesh grazers consume a variety of marine prokaryotes and select between coexisting lineages and similar cell sizes. We show that Prochlorococcus may evade filtration more than other cells and that planktonic archaea are consumed by macrozooplanktonic grazers. Discovery of these feeding relationships identifies a new source of mortality for Earth's dominant marine microbes and alters our understanding of how top-down processes shape microbial community and function.
Rights
© 2023 Applied Microbiology International
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DOI
10.1111/1462-2920.16334
Citation Details
Sweeney, Carey P.; Sutherland, Kelly R.; and Thompson, Anne, "Selective and Differential Feeding on Marine Prokaryotes by Mucous Mesh Feeders" (2023). Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations. 411.
Description
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Environmental Microbiology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Environmental Microbiology.