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Long-term cultivation of the groundwater amphipod Niphargus aquilex (Crustacea)

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Abstract

A lack of knowledge about the long-term cultivation requirements of groundwater fauna is hampering the establishment of biological criteria to identify chemical threats to groundwater. As a contribution to solving this problem, we have carried out comprehensive laboratory studies on the diet and survival rates of the groundwater amphipod Niphargus aquilex. Preference tests indicated higher consumption of common ash (Fraxinus excelsior) than black alder (Alnus glutinosa) foliage. Compared to detritus from the sampling site, however, survival rates of N. aquilex significantly increased when living oligochaetes were added to ash foliage as an additional food source. Our results indicate that N. aquilex has evolved an omnivorous feeding strategy as an adaptation to the limited availability of nutrient-rich food sources in aquifers. The high acceptance of animal food sources and the predatory behaviour of N. aquilex underline the importance of and requirement for protein in its diet and suggest a high trophic position in groundwater food webs. Based on our results, we provide an optimized culturing protocol that opens up new perspectives for using N. aquilex as an organism for testing the biological quality of groundwater.

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The datasets are available from the corresponding author on a reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Maria Wille for conducting the leaf preference test. We also thank Susanne Isabel Schmidt (UFZ Centre for Environmental Research, Magdeburg, Germany) and Elisabeth Pohlon (Justus Liebig University Gießen, Germany) for proofreading the manuscript. The study was part of the joint research project GroundCare that was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the project consortium ‘GroundCare’ (033W037E) via the call ‘Regional Water Resources Management for a Sustainable Protection of Waters in Germany’ (ReWaM) and the funding scheme ‘Sustainable Water Management’ (NaWaM).

Funding

This study was financially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the project consortium ‘GroundCare’ (Grant No. 033W037E) via the call ‘Regional Water Resources Management for a Sustainable Protection of Waters in Germany’ (ReWaM) and the funding scheme ‘Sustainable Water Management’ (NaWaM).

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  1. Institute of Animal Ecology, Justus Liebig University, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 26 (IFZ), 35390, Gießen, Germany

    Nora K. Rütz, Jürgen Marxsen & Volkmar Wolters

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  1. Nora K. Rütz
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NKR and JM designed the study; NKR performed the field and lab work under supervision of JM; NKR analyzed the data with assistance of JM; NKR wrote the first draft of the manuscript; NKR, JM and VW contributed to writing-revisions and editing substantially; VW procured funding and supervised the study; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Nora K. Rütz.

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Rütz, N.K., Marxsen, J. & Wolters, V. Long-term cultivation of the groundwater amphipod Niphargus aquilex (Crustacea). Hydrobiologia 850, 269–281 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-022-05058-6

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