FUNGI AND FOOD PREFERENCES OF AQUATIC INVERTEBRATES

Several stream detritus feeders prefer to eat partly decomposed leaves with a rich microbial population rather than sterile or freshly falle n leaves. Leaves may already bear inoculum of typical aquatic hyphomyc etes when they enter the streams, and are in many cases soon extensive ly colonised by fungi. The food of leaf eating invertebrates actually consists of two main components; leaf material and fungal mycelium. Ex periments conducted to investigate how individual fungi influence the palatability of leaves, demonstrate the influence of fungal population on the leaves on food selection by stream invertebrates, thereby pote ntially controlling and directing the turnover of leaf detritus.