The Information Value of Fatty Acid Composition of Triacylglycerols and Polar Lipids of Seston in Assaying the Food Spectrum of Microzooplankton in the Bugach Reservoir

摘要

Little is known in contemporary hydroecology about the food spectrum of microscopic consumers in freshwater ecosystems (i.e., microzooplankton and pro-tists). On the other hand, these organisms constitute an important component of matter and energy transfer along the trophic chains of water bodies. Usually, hydrobiological study of food spectrum is reduced to visual analysis of the intestine contents of the hydro-bionts. Although this method is widely used in hydro-biological research, it has a number of disadvantages, The main disadvantage is that this method fails to determine the actual rate of organic matter assimilation. This is why biochemical methods based on the analysis of the fatty acid (FA) composition of organic matter were extensively used in recent years in addition to visual inspection of intestine contents. The biochemical methods of FA assay provide an opportunity to trace the trophic relations between hydrobionts and to determine the efficiency of assimilation of various food species. It is well known that FA spectra are taxon-spe-cific. Probably, this difference provided a methodological basis for the use of FAs as biomarkers of individual groups of hydrobionts.