Drs. Nowell, Jumars and Mayer will undertake several complementary studies to determine the relationship between sediment transport in coastal environments and the quality and quantity of food for benthic animals. They will focus on particulate food quality for deposit feeders, although many of the results also should be useful for suspension feeders, heterotrophic bacteria, and heterotrophs in general. The studies will range from field measurements of food quality, to laboratory experiments of feeding responses with engineered food materials, to laboratory flume experiments testing the relationships between sediment dynamics and food quality variables. With species conveniently available and these estimates, they will investigate the ideas that deposit feeders benefit from horizontal sediment transport as an increase in rate of food supply due to simple lateral homogenization of the resource, that surface deposit feeders benefit from the vertical hydrodynamic sorting produced by resuspension and redeposition, and that deposit feeders benefit from stimulation of microbial growth due to transport.
