Microzooplankton as a food source for the scyphozoan <i>Aurelia coerulea</i>: growth and feeding responses of the polyp stage in field assemblages

To evaluate the growth and feeding responses of the polyp stage of the moon jellyfish Aurelia coerulea to natural microzooplankton assemblages, bud production among A. coerulea polyps was monitored in field bottle incubation experiments using fractionated field seawater (<200-µm fraction) in summer. During this incubation period, feeding rates were measured twice by examining changes in the abundance of various microzooplankton taxa over two days. The number of buds increased with incubation period, reaching a mean of 5.8–9.3 buds per polyp after 16 days, at which point the carbon content of the new buds and the mother polyp was estimated to be 1.3–2.5 times higher than the carbon content of the initial polyp. Using these carbon content estimates, I calculated specific growth rates of 0.1–0.2 d−1 during the first 10 days. The results of the present feeding experiments suggest that polyps utilize diverse groups of microzooplankton and achieve relatively high carbon ingestion rates from ciliates, dinoflagellates, molluscs, and copepod nauplii. Total microzooplankton ingestion rates were estimated to be 4.05 and 3.27 µgC polyp−1 d−1 in the two experiments, respectively. These findings show that natural microzooplankton assemblages play a role as prey of polyps and can promote asexual reproduction of polyps under natural summer conditions.