Affiliation:
1. Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil
Abstract
This paper presents the results of the first analysis of the natural diet of Hippocampus reidi, one of the most sought after seahorse species in the international aquarium trade. Its main goals were to investigate food items and prey categories consumed by the species, and to discuss feeding strategy and inter and intra-individual components of niche breadth. Data were gathered from October 2005 to September 2006 at the Mamanguape estuary, State of Paraíba, NE Brazil. Food items from seahorses anaesthetized with clove oil were obtained by using a modified version of the flushing method, and were counted and identified to the lowest possible taxonomic level. Specimens were marked and had their height, sex, life and reproductive stage recorded, and then returned to the same place where they were found for the further assessment of anaesthetization/gut flushing on seahorses. Food items were analyzed using frequency of occurrence, relative abundance, index of preponderance and prey-specific abundance using the points method. The graphic method of Amundsen et al. (1996) was used to interpret the feeding strategy and contribution to niche breadth. Nematodes and crustaceans were the most important items found, the latter item usually being the most commonly found in the gut contents of syngnathids. No significant differences in diet composition were found between reproductive stages, however, a higher proportion of large items were consumed by the larger seahorses. The feeding strategy and niche breadth analysis suggests that H. reidi has a generalist feeding strategy, with high variation between phenotypes. Our results suggest that the anaesthetization-flushing technique has the potential to be a useful tool in seahorse research.
Subject
Aquatic Science,Animal Science and Zoology,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Reference51 articles.
1. A new approach to graphical analysis of feeding strategy from stomach contents data: modification of the Costello (1990) method;Amundsen P. A.;Journal of Fish Biology,1996
2. A method for securing the gut contents of small, live fish;Baker A. N.;Transactions of the American Fisheries Society,1976
3. Evaluation of a gastric lavage method for Sturgeons;Brosse L.;North American Journal of Fisheries Management,2002
4. Seahorse Husbandry in Public Aquaria: 2002 Manual, with chapters contributed by members of the Syngnathid Discussion Group;Bull C.,2002
5. Community structure and trophic relationships of the fish fauna of an estuarine Posidonia australis seagrass habitat in Port Hacking, New South Wales;Burchmore J. J.;Aquatic Botany,1984
Cited by
42 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献