"He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all
directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities."

John Steinbeck - Log from the Sea of Cortez

Monday, October 11, 2010

Stealth predator

It's no secret that ctenophores, or comb jellies, are voracious predators on zooplankton.  They can make a serious dent in copepod densities, even though calanoid copepods aren't the easiest prey for most slow-moving predators.  This is because the copeods are highly attuned to the slighest motions of the water around them.  Ctenophores, however, have one-upped their crustacean prey.  The ctenophore Mnemiopsis uses tiny cilia within the oral lobes to produce a current of water that moves copepod prey very delicately into their gastrovascular cavity, before the copepods are aware that they're being consumed.  Here it is at PNAS.

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