Importance of Flow and Flux Micro-Environment to Soft-Bottom Benthos

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The paradigm emerging from various studies of organisms and flow is that the responses are widespread and morphology-specific. The overall goal of this project is to determine the importance of flow and sediment flux microenvironments to deposit and suspension feeder's responses. The major hypotheses of the project are that: A. suspension feeding is a response to food particle flux, not flow speed and seston concentration alone; and, B. deposit feeding is a response to deposition of fine particles of high food value. These hypotheses will be tested by observing the feeding behavior and rate of several species of sandflat macrofauna in a factorial manipulation of fluid flow, particle flux and bed characteristics. In the first year, the bulk flow and sediment flux experiments will be conducted to further delineate the roles of flow and sediment flux in mean population behavior of four target species of polychaete worms. In the second year, critical tests of the hypotheses will be undertaken through manipulation of flow, flux and particle food value as operationally defined by labile protein measurements. The results of this project will have important implications for the modeling of benthic feeding biology, for explanations of form and function as adaptations to flow, and for the design of laboratory flow microcosm experiments.