Seasonality, Dietary Overlap and the Role of Taxonomic Resolution in the Study of the Diet of Three Congeneric Fishes from a Tropical Bay

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Not only seasonality but also taxonomic resolution of prey categories has been shown to affect diet studies. We analyzed the stomach contents of three sympatric species, Stellifer rastrifer, S. brasiliensis and S. stellifer, sampled monthly from August 2003 to October 2004 in Caraguatatuba Bay, southeastern Brazil. General characteristics and similarities among their diets were evaluated by considering high taxonomic ranks of all prey groups, and also the lower taxonomic ranks of the main prey groups. Dietary similarity was relatively high among species and low between seasons, and both evaluation criteria gave the equivalent results. The rare items, however, provided information about resource partition, and the species compositions of the most important groups were apparently good indicators of food availability.

Related collections

Most cited references 2

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

You are what you eat, whenever or wherever you eat it: an integrative analysis of fish food habits in Canadian and U.S.A. waters.

Penny Cook, Andrew Link, Donald Bundy … (2011)

The degree to which fish diet differs by season and area, particularly over broad scales, was examined for the first time in temperate, contiguous north-west Atlantic Ocean waters by comparing food habit data for 10 species of fishes collected concurrently during the spring and autumn surveys in the U.S.A. (Gulf of Maine proper and Georges Bank) and in the summer survey in Canada (western Scotian Shelf and Bay of Fundy). For most species, there was a general concurrence among the three seasons and four areas: summer diets had the same dominant prey items as spring and autumn diets. Although a suite of multivariate analyses did elucidate some differences in specific proportions of the diet for these species across seasons and areas, the main prey did not substantially change for most of these species. These results suggest that there are (1) minimal differences in diet across season for these species at these taxonomic resolutions, (2) there are minimal differences in diet geographically for these species and (3) differences across species, as expected, are important. Many fisheries ecosystem and multispecies models are dependent on food habit data, where resolving seasonal and spatial differences in diet remains an important consideration; however, the present work implies that amalgamated estimates of diet from seasonal surveys may be a reasonable approach when no finer seasonal resolution exists, as long as due diligence is exercised. © 2011 The Authors. Journal of Fish Biology © 2011 The Fisheries Society of the British Isles.

0 comments Cited 5 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Zooplankton community dynamics in relation to the seasonal cycle and nutrient inputs in an urban tropical estuary in Brazil.

R Schwamborn, Priscila Alves, Sara A D Vieira … (2008)

Micro- and mesozooplankton were studied in the Sergipe estuary, northeastern Brazil, in order to assess the temporal variability in abundance and biodiversity under stressed conditions (urban pollution). Zooplankton samples and abiotic data were collected at one station during a full tidal cycle in July 2001 and in February 2002, corresponding to the rainy and dry seasons, respectively. The salinity regime was euhaline-polyhaline. Phosphate and dissolved oxygen were higher in July 2001, and nitrite, nitrate and ammonia in February 2002. Chlorophyll-a concentrations were low as a result of light limitation, with 1.18 +/- 0.88 microg x m(-3) in February and 1.53 +/- 1.48 microg x m(-3) in July. Fifty-nine zooplankton taxa were identified. Microzooplankton were abundant, mainly the tintinnid Favella ehrenbergii, and ranged from 18,649 ind x m(-3) in July to 678,009 ind x m(-3) in February. Mesozooplankton ranged from 1,537 ind x m(-3) in July to 37,062 ind x m(-3) in February and were dominated by barnacle nauplii in July and by copepods in February. The cluster analysis by taxa revealed the existence of three distinct groups: resilient species, characteristic of estuarine areas and occurring during all the year; species mainly more abundant in July (indicators of a healthier environmental condition); and species more abundant in February (tolerant to poor water quality).

0 comments Cited 3 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Contributors

Konstantinos I. Stergiou: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date Collection: 2013

Publication date (Electronic): 6 February 2013

Volume: 8

Issue: 2

Electronic Location Identifier: e56107

Affiliations

[1 ]Instituto Oceanográfico da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

[2 ]Centro Universitário Módulo, Caraguatatuba, São Paulo, Brazil

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Author notes

* E-mail: mairapombo@ 123456gmail.com

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceived and designed the experiments: MRD AT. Performed the experiments: MP MRD AT. Analyzed the data: MP. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MRD AT. Wrote the paper: MP MRD AT.

Article

Publisher ID: PONE-D-12-26034

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056107

PMC ID: 3566041

SO-VID: 4003d178-b30a-4ad0-8e50-5ff6e13220a9

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

History

Date received : 23 August 2012

Date accepted : 8 January 2013

Page count

Pages: 10

Funding

This study was partially supported by the Project Aware Foundation and by the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), which we also thank for the grant provided to M.R.D. (Proc. No. 05/60041-6) and the scholarship awarded to M.P. Logistical support was provided by the Instituto Costa Brasilis and the University Center of the Fundação de Ensino Octávio Bastos. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Seasonality, Dietary Overlap and the Role of Taxonomic Resolution in the Study of the Diet of Three Congeneric Fishes from a Tropical Bay

Read this article at

Abstract

Related collections

PLOS Climate

Most cited references 2

You are what you eat, whenever or wherever you eat it: an integrative analysis of fish food habits in Canadian and U.S.A. waters.

Zooplankton community dynamics in relation to the seasonal cycle and nutrient inputs in an urban tropical estuary in Brazil.

Author and article information

Contributors

Journal

Affiliations

Author notes

Article

History

Page count

Funding

Categories

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 489

Cited by 4

Most referenced authors 21