Determination of Experimental Conditions for Measurement of the Clearance Rate of an Intertidal Bivalve, Glauconome chinensis

To determine optimal conditions for measurement of the clearance rate in feeding experiment of an intertidal bivalve Glauconome chinensis, effects of starvation, extent of mixing at subsampling, and initial prey concentration were assessed. Experiments were conducted separately for each condition with different treatments. Two-way ANOVAs showed that there were significant differences in clearance rates among different starvation periods (p<0.001), extents of mixing (p = 0.005), and prey concentrations (p < 0.001). Starvation for 1 or 2 days gave rise to 2 to 3-fold increase in the clearance rate. After starvation for 5 days, the clearance rate decreased seriously, implying loss of physiological status. It is suggested that animals should be fed during acclimation. The differences of the clearance rates between gentle and vigorous mixings were significant, but the differences were smaller than that among different incubation times. It was found that vigorous mixing is not necessary. The effect of initial prey concentration was great. However, optimal prey concentration could not be determined at any fixed value. Experiments with multiple concentrations of algal prey are recommended. Optimal incubation time for measurement of the clearance rate of G. chinensis was determined to be 2-4 hours.