The Myth that Pleco's eat Wood,

Why no plecos, plecostomus, L numbers or whiptails eat wood or use it for digestion within the aquarium. This video focuses on the science why these fishes are not xylovores and cannot digest wood. While looking at the genera Panaque (Royal Plecos), Panaqolus (flash pleco, clown pleco, tiger ), Lasiancistrus and Hypostomus (Cochliodon group such as the rusty pleco).
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Resources:
Lujan, N.K., German, D.P. and Winemiller, K.O., 2011. Do wood‐grazing fishes partition their niche?: morphological and isotopic evidence for trophic segregation in Neotropical Loricariidae. Functional Ecology, 25(6), pp.1327-1338.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wil...

German, D.P., Neuberger, D.T., Callahan, M.N., Lizardo, N.R. and Evans, D.H., 2010. Feast to famine: the effects of food quality and quantity on the gut structure and function of a detritivorous catfish (Teleostei: Loricariidae). Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology, 155(3), pp.281-293.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

McCauley, M., German, D.P., Lujan, N.K. and Jackson, C.R., 2020. Gut microbiomes of sympatric Amazonian wood‐eating catfishes (Loricariidae) reflect host identity and little role in wood digestion. Ecology and evolution, 10(14), pp.7117-7128.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/f...

German, D.P., 2009. Inside the guts of wood-eating catfishes: can they digest wood?. Journal of Comparative Physiology B, 179(8), pp.1011-1023.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

https://german.bio.uci.edu/PFK_respon...