Answer:
a. aquatic insects
Explanation:
Aquatic insects constitute an important component of freshwater aquatic biodiversity. In addition to being very abundant in rivers and streams, they are also present in lakes and temporary water stagnations (wetlands). In water sources, these insects can live attached to stones, in decaying leaves and plant material or buried in fine sediment. Aquatic insects have different eating habits and therefore have multiple behavioral and morphological modifications.
Aquatic insects can live attached to stones, in decaying leaves and plant material or buried in fine sediment. According to the place where they live and the availability of resources, these insects have different eating habits. In this line, we have predatory aquatic insects of other insects or vertebrates such as turtles (access contents about turtles) and fish, feeding on living tissue of vascular plants and detritivorous habits that means that they feed on organic matter in suspension in the water column.
In the evolutionary history of aquatic insects, due to diversification in eating habits, they have modifications in their body appendages. In this context, we have predatory aquatic insects with raptorial legs to hold the prey, with a raptorial lip like dragonflies for the same purposes, and other detritus filters have multiple mushrooms on the anterior legs and mouth structures to retain organic matter.
According to the mode of acquisition of food, we have predators that actively forage in search of prey such as dragonflies, also passive predators such as hemiptera of the Belostomatidae family. Detritivorous aquatic insects, meanwhile, can be filters, crushers, collectors or scrapers of organic matter.
