Heterotrophic nanoflagellates are the main consumers of bacteria and picophytoplankton in the ocean and thus play a key role in ocean biogeochemistry. They are found in all major branches of the eukaryotic tree of life but are united by all being equipped with one or a few flagella that they use to generate a feeding current. These microbial predators are faced with the challenges that viscosity at this small scale impedes predator–prey contact and that their foraging activity disturbs the ambient water and thus attracts their own flow-sensing predators. Here, I describe some of the diverse adaptations of the flagellum to produce sufficient force to overcome viscosity and of the flagellar arrangement to minimize fluid disturbances, and thus of the various solutions to optimize the foraging–predation risk trade-off. I demonstrate how insights into this trade-off can be used to develop robust trait-based models of microbial food webs.

中文翻译：

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微生物世界中的捕食：鞭毛虫觅食的机制和权衡


异养纳米鞭毛虫是海洋中细菌和微浮游植物的主要消费者，因此在海洋生物地球化学中发挥着关键作用。它们存在于真核生物生命之树的所有主要分支中，但都配备了一个或几个鞭毛，它们用来产生摄食电流。这些微生物捕食者面临的挑战是，这种小规模的粘度会阻碍捕食者与猎物的接触，并且它们的觅食活动会扰乱周围的水，从而吸引它们自己的流量感应捕食者。在这里，我描述了鞭毛的一些不同适应方式，以产生足够的力来克服粘度，鞭毛排列以最大限度地减少流体干扰，从而描述了优化觅食-捕食风险权衡的各种解决方案。我演示了如何利用对这种权衡的见解来开发强大的基于性状的微生物食物网模型。