Sentences with phrase «filter feeders»

But the suspension of tiny droplets in the water column and their eventual build - up on the sea floor can create problems for filter feeders such as mussels and oysters, corals and shrimp larvae.

The mere presence of filter feeders as large as Tamisiocaris suggests that Cambrian ecosystems were much more productive than previously recognized, the researchers contend: As seen in modern species as diverse as fish, sharks, and whales, large animals can successfully exploit small prey only when they can be sieved from the environment in great concentrations.

The cut itself is about 9m deep and the occasionally strong tidal currents of Ambergris Caye provide a constant stream of food for the waiting filter feeders like the gorgonian sea fans and sponges that adorn the walls of the reef, which rises to the surface on either side sheltering turtles, crabs, morays and hundreds of small reef fish.

Whale sharks are filter feeders who sieve their tiny food through their large gills.

The findings pull the invention of gills closer to the «active lifestyle» shift in our early ancestors: the evolution from passive filter feeders to self - propelled ocean swimmers.

Everybody poops, but the poop of bloblike filter feeders called giant larvaceans could be laced with microplastics.

Upwelling is a crucial process because it provides the raw nutrients for phytoplankton to grow, creating a rich source of food for filter feeders and small fish and, in turn, larger fish and other organisms higher up the food chain.

The blue whale, a baleen or filter feeder cetacean, as contrasted to toothed whales, is a part time resident of the waters off of the Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

It's thought that filter feeders evolved to be so large because their prey is abundant and easily caught.

A translucent, vase - shaped filter feeder from Asia, Ciona has invaded five continents, including North America's West Coast.

The last question is particularly important because the pyrosomes eat zooplankton, which also supports populations of shrimp, crab, mollusks and other filter feeders.

They are primitive, sessile, mostly marine, waterdwelling filter feeders that pump water through their matrix to filter out particulates of food matter.

This is the first time scientists have been able to measure the ecological importance of hidden filter feeders.

«As adept filter feeders and scavengers, crustaceans may not have been subjected to the same pressures as other arthropods to develop a predatory weapon - like venom,» he says.

A 36 - million - year - old fossil skeleton is revealing a critical moment in the history of baleen whales: what happened when the ancestors of these modern - day filter feeders first began to distinguish themselves from their toothy, predatory predecessors.

But, with the exception of bottom - feeding fish and sessile (immobile) filter feeders caught in the immediate vicinity, any radionuclides from Fukushima have been diluted by the vastness of the Pacific to insignificant quantities.

Odd, comblike fossils unearthed from 520 - million - year - old rocks in northern Greenland are the food - gathering structures of the world's first known free - ranging filter feeder, a new study suggests.

It tells the 400 - million - year story of a group that once comprised the planet's top carnivores, to say nothing of lineages that diversified into scavengers, grazers and even filter feeders.

Mysticetes didn't become true filter feeders until millions of years later, he says.

# 50 Giant Prehistoric Filter Feeder The 75 - million - year - old remains of the massive Bonnerichthys are in the collection of the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, Kansas.

Their absence from shallower waters has allowed a unique community of Antarctic filter feeders to flourish for millions of years.

«Bivalves such as oysters are also filter feeders that obtain their food by pumping water through their system and filtering small organisms,» she said.

Grazers and filter feeders drive the ocean's biological pump as they remove and sequester carbon at various rates.

Illuminating the cover of the May issue of G3 is a lake - dwelling filter feeder no more than a couple millimeters long.

When filter feeders are present during toxic algal blooms, they can concentrate algal toxins in their tissues.

This range extension also fills a conspicuous ecological gap: no large - bodied filter feeders were known previously from the Cretaceous.

The walls field an incredible amount of colourful filter feeders, such as sea apples, sea squirts, tunicates and crinoids.

They will be shown alongside artists of Hawaii, Les Filter Feeders (Keith Tallett & Sally Lundburg, a collaborative artist duo on the Big Island); the sculptor Charlton Kupa'a Hee; and the Oahu artist Andrew Binkley.

At one end of the oceans food chain, filter feeders mistake the plastic suspension for fish eggs and krill.

Now that man has killed a majority of the whale filter feeders there is little predation to keep this feed back at bay.

Valuable, too, are seafood activist Paul Greenberg's 3 easy rules for eating seafood: (1) eat American, (2) eat a greater variety than we currently do, and (3) eat mostly farmed filter feeders.

«It includes relatively large - brained hunters like dolphins and killer whales (which have the demonstrable intelligence of land - based hunters such as dogs) and tiny - brained filter feeders such as the blue whale.

Filter feeders such as mussels and clams absorbed the microcystin and concentrated it over time.

Filter feeders like shellfish, some finned fish and other animals concentrate the toxins present in these algae.

Whale sharks are filter feeders who inhabit the warm waters of the tropics.

These are mollusks, after all — cousins to brainless clams and oysters, passive filter feeders that get along just fine, thank you, with a few ganglia for central nervous systems.

At least one recent study, authored by one of Thompson's former graduate students and colleagues, including Thompson, showed that a type of filter feeder called a lugworm was adversely affected when exposed to sand that had microplastics that contained common chemical pollutants.

Introduction The blue whale, a baleen or filter feeder cetacean, as contrasted to toothed whales, is a part time resident of the waters off of the Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

Oysters are filter feeders, so they actually make cleaner water on their own — even when they're farmed.

Because oysters are filter feeders, they all have a slightly different taste due to the difference in the tidal water.

«Many bioeroding organisms are filter feeders that perform better in high nutrient environments, so the high nutrient groundwater likely enhanced bioeroder activity.

Mussels and other shellfish are filter feeders, and as the organisms grow, they take up or assimilate nutrients in algae and other microorganisms filtered from the surrounding waters.

But the biggest treat arrived while I was snorkeling afterwards, when I was treated to a swim with a whale shark — a filter feeder, not a predator — so close that our local guide, Diego, could pet its dorsal fin (I have my limits).

That huge gap stumped researchers until last year's discovery by University of Oxford paleontologist Matt Friedman, who identified a 15 - foot - long fossil fish, previously excavated from a slab of rock in Kansas, as a filter feeder.

While scallops can spurt through the ocean by rhythmically snapping their bivalve shells open and shut like Pac - Man, the sea creatures are filter feeders that don't need to stalk their prey.

In areas of great abundance — such as Saginaw Bay, western Lake Erie and Green Bay — these «filter feeders» have removed most small edible algae from the water column.

Humpback whales commonly feed on large prey shoals by accelerating to high speeds and «lunging» at their prey, engulfing a large volume of water and filtering out the prey through their filter feeders.