How fast can plankton feed? Maximum ingestion rate scales with digestive surface area
Journal: Journal of Plankton Research
Year: 2012

Allometric scaling rules have been classically used in plankton ecology to describe how the maximum ingestion rate (I max ) under steady-state conditions changes with the body size of the consumer. Empirical and theoretical concerns, however, motivate a more accurate and mechanistic description of size -ingestion relations. Here, I propose to relate I max to the digestive surface area, which expresses the capacity in preprocessing and digesting food items. This surface area depends on both the b