Although fieldcollected
ctenophores often contain numerous prey
items, limiting the applicability of the reported digestion
times, the small size of the earliest life-history stages
(tentaculate and transition stage larvae) limited the
number of prey that can be consumed. Finally, digestion
time decreases with increasing ctenophore size (Chang,
2004). However, the digestion time for most prey taxa
did not change in relation to larval ctenophore length.
None of these factors appeared to contribute signifi-
cantly to the observed variability of digestion times.