The clearance rates of Centropages chierchiae obtained in
the unialgal experiments were quite variable, and ranged
between 6.3 and 150.0 mL21 cop21 day21. The
expected decline in clearance rate with increasing food
availability was only observed for the 198C data set. At
the other temperatures, the narrow range of (low) food
concentrations used very likely precluded the identification
of clearer declining trends. Overall, the clearance
rates obtained in this study were lower than those
reported by Schnack (Schnack, 1983) for C. chierchiae
fed the diatom Thalassiosira partheneia (offered as single
cell, 24–340 mL cop21 day21) and the dinoflagellate
Scrippsiella trochoidea (192–570 mL cop21 day21) at low
food concentrations (,100 mg C L21). This was quite
unexpected because T. partheneia given as single cells is
much smaller (9 mm diameter) and S. trochoidea is similarly
sized (20 mm diameter) to the prey we have used to describe
the functional response of C. chierchiae. Moreover,