Estimating digestion rate and the problem of individual variability, exemplified by a scyphozoan jellyfish

Short-term (h) and long-term (days) individual variability and the effects of momentary change in feeding intensity on digestion time were studied in the scyphomedusa Aurelia aurita as a basis for developing a method to experimentally measure the digestion rate with a high precision. Ten individual medusae showed only small, non-significant differences in average digestion time (range, 2.1-2.5 h at 10 degrees C) over a 9-day experiment, whereas variability within and between days and between individuals at a given occasion was high. When medusae were manually kept at a constant feeding intensity, stomach fullness showed high variability both between individuals and within an individual over time. With a feeding intensity of, respectively, 1, 2, 4 and 8 prey h(-1) over a 5-h experimental period, stomach fullness of most individuals corresponded to a theoretical digestion time of 1-3 h, whereas single meals of the same size usually gave somewhat higher digestion time. Medusae subject to a switching from a low to a high feeding intensity tended to increase the variability, but most individuals showed a digestion time of 1-3 h. An opposite switching tended to increase the digestion time and its variability. It is concluded that the digestion time of A. aurita is randomly variable over time within given limits for a given food and environmental condition. This variability is non-synchronised in the population, causing high variability between individuals, and changes in the feeding intensity cause additional variability. However, the average digestion time of A. aurita in a physically and nutritionally stable environment is robust, and changes in the feeding intensity give predictable effects. The use of field collected data on stomach contents and laboratory determined digestion times is therefore an attractive method to calculate predation rate, but the inherent high variability in digestion time must be taken into consideration when designing the digestion experiments. Based on these findings a simple experimental method to determine the digestion time of aquatic animals is outlined and evaluated. The digestion time is simply given as the ratio between number of prey in stomach and total number of prey eaten, times the incubation time, assuming that the feeding intensity is constant.