Immunological methods for food web analysis in a soft-bottom benthic community

Basic to nearly any prediction concerning the behavior and structure of entire communities or of their components is knowledge of trophic connections among species. A major impediment to such understanding of soft-bottom benthos is methodological. Because none of the routinely available methods of food web analysis (e.g. visual gut content analysis, direct observation of feeding, tracer techniques) is generally suitable for examining all trophic interactions of benthic infauna, we rought to evaluate the potential of immunological methods for identifying predatorprey relationships in one typical, estuarine, intertidal sand flat. Whole-organism extracts of individual macro- and meiofaunal taxa were injected into rabbits to produce antisera of varying specificity. Double immunodiffusion precipitin tests of antiserum specificity revealed both phyletic and trophic relationships among 20 taxa. Using relatively unspecific antisera, preliminary analysis of the stomach contents of a few surface deposit-feeders and particle browsers was successful, giving positive identification of several trophic links which would otherwise have gone undetected. The production of taxon-specific antisera is expected to provide the methodological tool necessary to document the breadth of trophic connections in a marine benthic food web.