Dried Organic Substances as Food for Larval Annelids

Abstract

MANY workers have found the provision of suitable food materials for rearing marine larvæ a major difficulty. Previously, the choice has been limited to marine unicells, of which only Phaeodactylum tricornutum has been widely used for rearing larval annelids. No quantitative feeding investigations have been carried out with annelids comparable to those of Bruce, Knight and Parke¹ and Davis² with oyster larvæ; and those of Raymont and Gross³ and Marshall and Orr^4,5 with Colanus finmarchicus. The experimental work reported here was carried out to compare the food values of readily obtained dried organic substances and various unicells (Table 1) for larvæ of Cirratulus cirratus.