The glacial cryoconite holes are a unique environment inhabited by a community of metazoans, mainly rotifers and tardigrades. They are metazoan consumers of microflora that live at temperatures never exceeding 0–1°C. Using fluorescently labeled, polystyrene beads of bacterial size (0.5 µm diameter) and epifluorescence microscopy, we estimated the filtration activity and clearance rate of glacier populations of rotifers and tardigrades and compared their relative effect on suspended food in cryoconite holes on two glaciers with different load of nutrients. The uptake of particles by both metazoan groups was important. The mean clearance rate calculated for feeding rotifers was similar at the two glaciers, 0.33 and 0.36 µl ind−1 h−1 for the glacier with lower and higher load of nutrients, respectively. The clearance rate of feeding tardigrades on the glacier with lower load of nutrients was 0.69 µl ind−1 h−1 and significantly differ from the glacier with higher load of nutrients,0.15 µl ind−1 h−1. The community of both groups cleared less than 1 % of the cryoconite hole volume per day, resulting in a minor impact. This is the first study to quantitatively estimate the feeding rate in tardigrades.
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