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JOURNAL OF PLANKTON RESEARCH | VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 11 | PAGES 2179-2197 | 1998
© Oxford University Press

research-article

Chlorophyll a conversion and gut passage time for the pelagic tunicate Oikopleura vanhoeffeni (Appendicularia)

Alexander B. Bochdansky1, Don Deibel and Elizabeth A. Hatfield

Ocean Sciences Centre, Memorial University of Newfoundland St John’s, Newfoundland A1C 5S7, Canada

1To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Fish Ecology Lab, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada

Received on January 2, 1998; accepted on July 2, 1998 We determined the chlorophyll (Chl) a conversion efficiency, defined as the conversion of Chi a into pheopigments and non-fluorescent products, for the cold-water appendicularian Oikopleura vanhoeffeni using 68Ge as conservative tracer. In both laboratory experiments and in freshly collected animals, there was enough undegraded Chi a present in the gut to provide an index of feeding activity for individual animals. In laboratory experiments with diatoms, Chi a conversion efficiency was predictable with an average of 79%. The mean gut passage time (0.8 h) determined using corn starch and diatoms as markers was not influenced by food concentration or animal size over a trunk length range of 1.8–5 mm. When experimentally determined Chi a conversion efficiency and gut passage times were applied to O.vanhoeffeni from Logy Bay (Newfoundland), the estimated clearance rates were in close agreement with previously published values using several different techniques. We therefore suggest that the modified gut pigment technique is a useful tool to assess in situ ingestion rates of O.vanhoeffeni.


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