Article published in The Conversation explains new discoveries on the unusual feeding strategies of mucous-mesh grazers:
https://theconversation.com/meet-the-ocean-creatures-that-use-a-mesh-of-mucus-to-catch-their-food-95749
Marine microbes exhibit highly varied, often non-spherical shapes that have functional significance for essential processes, including nutrient acquisition and sinking rates. There is a surprising absence of data, however, on how cell shape affects grazing, which is crucial for predicting the fate of oceanic carbon. We used synthetic spherical and...
Aggregations of the neustonic hydrozoan Velella velella occur periodically in the northern California Current. Despite the regular occurrence of notable bloom events in this productive upwelling zone, little is known about their trophic ecology. We used gut content and stable isotope analyses (SIA) to elucidate V. velella prey selectivity and...
Understanding the factors that control predation in pelagic communities can inform predictions of community structure in marine ecosystems. Ubiquitous and selective predators such as cnidarian hydromedusae rely on their nematocysts to capture and retain prey but it is not clear how the density and spatial distribution of these cells relate...
Mucous-mesh grazers (pelagic tunicates and thecosome pteropods) are common in oceanic waters and efficiently capture, consume and repackage particles many orders of magnitude smaller than themselves. They feed using an adhesive mucous mesh to capture prey particles from ambient seawater. Historically, their grazing process has been characterized as non-selective, depending...
Ever wonder what that jelly-like blob on the beach is? Want to know how to identify a bloom of jellyfish? This guide was created to help identify common gelatinous animals encountered at sea or beachcombing. With this guide you can appreciate the diversity of gelatinous animals on the Oregon coast...
Degradation of lignin to simpler compounds is desirable for removing residual lignin during paper manufacture and accessing biomass carbohydrates for biofuel production, among other purposes. Lignin transformation using enzymes found in white rot fungi, some of nature's most efficient lignin-degrading organisms, offers a more environmentally benign, selective, and possibly less...
The particle capture mechanisms of biological filters determine the particle spectrum that is ingested by filter-feeding animals. Although ascidian feeding has been extensively investigated, the organismal-scale fluid dynamics and mesh-scale particle-filter interactions are not fully characterized. Fluorescein dye visualization of flow through the branchial sac of the ascidian Ciona intestinalis...
Appendicularians are ubiquitous marine grazers that use tangential filtration to collect micron and submicron prey. The food-concentrating filter (FCF) is the primary determinant of appendicularian prey selectivity, but the precise means by which it concentrates and conveys particles to the pharyngeal filter remain poorly understood. We used high-speed videography to...
During 2016-2018, unprecedented aggregations of the colonial pelagic tunicate Pyrosoma atlanticum were observed in the Northern California Current (NCC). Pyrosomes are common in tropical and sub-tropical ocean waters, but little is known about their abundance, distribution, and trophic ecology in mid-latitude systems. To assess these factors, pyrosomes were collected during...