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Journal of Experimental Biology 41,499-511 (1964)
Published by Company of Biologists 1964

Experiments on Substrate Selection by Corophium Species: Films and Bacteria on Sand Particles

P. S. MEADOWS ¹

¹ Marine Science Laboratories, Menai Bridge, Anglesey; Department of Zoology, The University, Glasgow, W. 2

1. A simple method is described for determining the substrate preferences of Corophium volutator (Pallas) and Corophium arenarium Crawford.

2. If offered a choice of its own substrate with that of the other species each prefers its own.

3. Level of illumination and colour of substrate have little effect on choice. An animal's size and hence its age has little effect on its substrate preferences.

4. C. volutator prefers a substrate previously maintained under anaerobic conditions, C. arenarium vice versa.

5. Treatments which kill, inactivate, or remove micro-organisms render sands unattractive to Corophium. These include boiling, acid-cleaning, drying, and soaking in fixatives or distilled water. Attempts to make these sands attractive again failed.

6. Distilled water, and solutions of the non-electrolytes sucrose and glycerol at the same osmotic pressure as sea water, induce many bacteria to desorb from sand particles; smaller numbers are desorbed in the presence of solutions of electrolytes at the same ionic strength as sea water (NaCl, Na₂SO₄, KC1, MgSO₄, MgCl₂, CaCl₂). Of all these, only distilled water and solutions of MgCl₂ and CaCl₂ reduce the attractive properties of sands. Hence the loss of bacteria from the surface of sand grains, though related to the ionic strength and composition of the medium, is not necessarily associated with a substrate becoming unattractive.