Filter feeder
Animals that feed by straining food from water / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Filter feeders are aquatic animals that acquire nutrients by feeding on organic matters, food particles or smaller organisms (bacteria, microalgae and zooplanktons) suspended in water, typically by having the water pass over or through a specialized filtering organ. Filter feeders can play an important role in condensing biomass and removing excess nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphate) from the local waterbody, and are therefore considered water-cleaning ecosystem engineers. They are also important in bioaccumulation and, as a result, as indicator organisms.
Filter feeders can be sessile, planktonic or nektonic depending on the species and the ecological niches they have evolved to occupy. Extant animals that rely on this method of feeding encompass numerous phyla, including sponges, cnidarians (jellyfish, sea pens and corals), arthropods (krill, mysids and barnacles), molluscs (bivalves, such as clams and oysters), echinoderms (sea lilies) and chordates (lancelets, sea squirts and salps, as well as many species of marine vertebrates such as most species of forage fish, American paddlefish, silver and bighead carps, baleen whales, manta ray and three species of sharks — the whale shark, basking shark and megamouth shark). Some water birds such as flamingos and certain duck species, though live predominantly on land, are also filter feeders when foraging.