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Studies on food and feeding of marine Demersal finfishes with special Reference to trophic interactions

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Relation http://eprints.cmfri.org.in/7595/
 
Title Studies on food and feeding of marine
Demersal finfishes with special
Reference to trophic interactions
 
Creator Abdurahiman, K P
 
Subject Theses
Demersal Fishes
Food and Feeding
 
Description Food and feeding habits of fourteen demersal finfishes exploited off the
Karnataka coast were studied to investigate trophic interactions within the
marine food web. The demersal finfi shes selected for the present study are
Epinephelus diacanthus (rockcod), Grammopli/es suppasitus (spotfin
flathead), Priacan/hus hamrur (bulls eye), Johnieops sina (drab jew fish),
O/oli/hes cuvieri (lesser tigertooth croaker), Nempilerus japanicus
(threadfin bream), Nemipterus mesoprion (thread fin bream), Leiognathus
bindlls (si lvcrbclly), CYlloglosslIS macros/om liS (tongue sole), PUII/PIIS
argenteus (silver pomfret), Lactarill.v lactarill.r (bigjawed jumper),
Pseudorhombus arsius (Iargetooth flounder), Carcharhinus Iimba/us
(blacktip shark) and Rhync'loba/us djiddensis (guitar fish).
• For understanding the importance of various diet components, the widely
accepted diet index, the Index of Relative Importance (IRI), which
integrates large data on three diet indices such as number, volume or
weight and frequency of occurrence, was used to quantify diet
components of each predator. Ontogenetic, seasonal (pre-monsoon,
monsoon and post-monsoon) variation in feeding and prey-predator
relationship studies were conducted. Prey-spece fi c abundance plots
(Amundson plot) and Electivity index were drawn to interpret each
predators feeding strategy and prey se lectivity respectively.
• The resu lts showed that the rockcod, E. diacanthus is a demersal
carnivore and preferred to feed largely on benthic crustaceans.
Crustaceans followed by fishes and molluscs were the most important
food components of E. diacanti1l1s. Of all the stomachs analysed, 73%
were empty and 27% contained food items. The most important
crustaceans were benthic crabs (69.4%) followed by Acetes indicus
(15.9%) and Oratosquilla nepa (6. 1%). Dietary breadth had great
seasonal variations. The mean trophic level was 4.11 ± 0.26. There was a
significant ontogenetic shift toward larger benthic crabs in larger rock
cods (P
 
Date 2006
 
Type Thesis
NonPeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Identifier http://eprints.cmfri.org.in/7595/1/TH-147.pdf
Abdurahiman, K P (2006) Studies on food and feeding of marine Demersal finfishes with special Reference to trophic interactions. ["eprint_fieldopt_thesis_type_phd" not defined] thesis, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin.