Plecs Don’t Eat Wood

Thought that would get your attention. Hope everyone is well.

The completion of a fascinating 14 year study of Loricariid digestion and gut microbes has concluded that ‘wood eating plecs’ do not actually digest wood, but consume soft (partly-digested by microbes) wood (and detritus) in order to digest the microbes and fungi that are on the wood breaking it down.

It’s far too technical for me, but the conclusions are not.

This means, obviously, that when we give our plecs a nice new clean piece of very hard wood to graze on, we are in effect giving them a tin of beans without a tin-opener.

Surprising stuff.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6413?fbclid=IwAR3iVf5tuwPBNOM-B4G9AE9C7JpRhiDQGM_Qj3codYQLRIEd7zH57Lvc1z8

This makes sense in a way as I’m sure I’ve read that in a tank with OPEC’s there is often a lot of detritus left on the substrate - I imagine this is undigested particles of wood!?

Another very interesting discovery... each species of plec has its own species (plural) of gut microbes, that have evolved with the plec, and bear no relation to the species present in the local environment. They’re passed on from parents to fry by the fry eating their parents’ poop.
If we knew the species of gut microbes for all plecs we could ID the plecs solely from their gut microbes...

Though I don’t plan on eating my parent poop any time soon...! 

Thanks, Hampalong - looks a good read and I'll certainly do so later on.

However, from what's written here, this doesn't surprise me - thinking back many moons ago to my pet rabbit gnawing on the wood of his run (before we varnished it with something to try to prevent that), the nerite snails munching on the wood but the poo falling at almost the same constant rate, etc. Similarly, my pet rabbit used to eat his own poo if it was soft but didn't eat it if it was hard, and I recall the vet telling us that he would have been eating it to obtain additional nutrients - which I suppose is the same as the fish that hang around under the wood in order to avail of the snail poo. 

Though I don’t plan on eating my parent poop any time soon...! 

Indeed!    I think our guts may be similar in their needs to those of our aquatic friends but our behaviour is hopefully very different - I'm not sure I know anyone who enjoys rolling around and smearing their backs in their partner's poo (as per nerite snails!) or eating their own or friends' poo (as per fish!). There probably is a psychiatric-type condition of such, though!  In fact, just looked it up - there is indeed a borderline personality disorder called Coprophagia.