THE MODELING OF EXPERIMENTS ON MEASURING COPEPODS GUT PASSAGE TIME

The influence of the scattering of copepod individual characteristics (initial gut content, interval between defecations, and a percent of g ut content evacuated with one fecal pellet) on the gut passage time T measured in filtered water was studied by means of simulation model. T he distribution of initial gut content exert the main influence on the results of measurements. Owing, to the random distribution of copepod s between the consecutive samplings the measured value of T may differ by a factor of two. It was found that the adopted methods of evaluati on of changes in gut evacuation rate with the decrease of gut-content are unreliable. May be it is precisely this fact that explains the dis crepant results of experiments.