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The effects of food quantity, light, and temperature on clearance rates in freshwater bivalves (Cyrenidae and Unionidae)

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Abstract

Assessing the environmental variables that influence freshwater bivalve filtration activity is key to better understand the functioning of stream ecosystems. In the present study, the effects of light (0 ± 0 µmol m−2 s−1 and 19 ± 2 µmol m−2 s−1) and temperature (10, 15, 20 and 25°C) on the clearance rates of two bivalve species: the Asian clam Corbicula fluminea (Cyrenidae) and pocketbook Lampsilis ovata (Unionidae) were assessed under controlled laboratory conditions at two different concentrations of algal food (i.e., 10,000 cells ml−1 and 100,000 cells ml−1). Clearance rates for C. fluminea varied from 0 to 491 ml g−1 h−1, while the observed range for L. ovata was 0 to 905 ml g−1 h−1. We found that the relative contribution of the tested variables was species-dependent. While temperature plays a major role in the clearance rates of C. fluminea, food concentration was the most significant variable in the clearance rate of L. ovata. Our results confirm the complex interactions between abiotic and biotic factors in freshwater bivalve filtration activity. Overall, clearance rates are highly variable especially in C. fluminea and presumably regulated by other untested factors suggesting high plasticity in filtration.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (ORO-DOE) and URS CH2M Oak Ridge LLC (UCOR) and is a product of ORNL’s Mercury Remediation Technology Development Program. Authors acknowledge Dr. Dan Hua, Senior Scientist at TWRA’s C-RAC, and her team who reared and provided the juveniles Lampsilis ovata used in this study. Special thanks to Allison Fortner, Michael Jones, Trent Jett, and Nikki Jones and Louise Stevenson (ORNL) for assistance with field collections of Corbicula fluminea and/or their constructive comments on the manuscript. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

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  1. Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 37830, USA

    Simon Pouil, Amber Hills & Teresa J. Mathews

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  1. Simon Pouil
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Contributions

S.P. and A.H. designed and performed the experiments and analyzed samples. S.P. performed statistical analyses, interpreted the results and wrote the first draft of the paper. T.J.M. supervised the experiments. T.J.M. and A.H. corrected and improved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Teresa J. Mathews.

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Pouil, S., Hills, A. & Mathews, T.J. The effects of food quantity, light, and temperature on clearance rates in freshwater bivalves (Cyrenidae and Unionidae). Hydrobiologia 848, 675–689 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-020-04472-y

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