Science News: South American Catfish Feeding Habits

Post by **Silurus** » 28 Jul 2003, 16:54

Synopsis by Lee Finley

A group from the Universidade Federal do Parana, Brazil have published the results of an interesting study on habitat use and food preferences in the fishes of an Atlantic coastal forest stream. The results were gathered via underwater observations followed by net collection of specimens. The microhabitat is recorded for the following catfishes: (Pimelodidae) Microglanis sp.n.; Heptapterus mustelinus; Pimelodella pappenheimi; and Rhamdia quelen; (Trichomycteridae) Homodiaetus sp.n.; (Callichthyidae) Corydoras barbatus; (Loricariidae) Hemipsilichthys sp.n.; Kronichthys subteres; Hisonotus leucofrenatus; Pseudotothyris obtusa; Schizolecis guntheri; Rineloricaria kronei and Ancistrus sp.

The catfishes are broken into a number of general "feeding behavior" groups and dietary composition, based on gut studies, is provided for seven of the species: one Corydoras, one pimelodid and five loricariids.

Reference: Aranha, J.M.R, D.F. Takeuti and T.M. Yoshimura. 1998. Habitat use and food partitioning of the fishes in a coastal stream of Atlantic Forest, Brazil. Rev. Biol. Trop. 46(4): 951-959.

PeacockBass · Post by **PeacockBass** » 30 Jul 2003, 09:32

i would realy like to know about the feeding habits..

do you have aditional information?

did they eat every day? or every other day?

Post by **Silurus** » 30 Jul 2003, 10:43

Almost all studies on fish feeding ecology do not address feeding frequency, since the results are largely based on gut content analysis.

pturley · Post by **pturley** » 31 Jul 2003, 03:28

One piece of useful information that can be found these papers regarding feeding frequency is the percentage of fishes examined that had food/prey items in their gut.

Sincerely,
Paul E. Turley

general-sherman · Post by **general-sherman** » 31 Jul 2003, 13:31

wouldn't they just eat whenever they're out hunting/foraging and they encounter food?
foragers would encounter food more frequently than predators?
most species will have a particular feeding habits/habit...but how can we ever account for what percentage of those fish that actually FIND food. fishkeepers seem to worry so much about whether fish feed every day in the wild, but we can only ever make a genralisation based on studying captured fish. how will any ever come up with a figure like: 100% of x species population looks for food every day and 67.855% of them feed.
sounds like something that can be speculated upon and never proven. i think the only conclusion we can come to is that fish look for food every day...sometimes they find it, sometimes they don't.
hunting for food is an ongoing process for a wild animal. its not a question of them feeding every day or not. its a question of whether a predator finds prey every time, or a hebivore finds the right kind of plant every day. questions we can't answer.