Relationship between Body Shape and Food Habits of Fish from Three Reservoirs of Sri Lanka

Abstract

In the present paper, an attempt is made to investigate whether the body shape indices can be used to predict food habits of fish species in three reservoir fish communities of Sri Lanka. The present analysis is based on the studies on food and feeding habits of fish species and their body shape indices in three Sri Lankan reservoirs, namely Minneriya, Udawalawe and Victoria. Body proportions of individual fish species were determined as P1 (= Maximum height of the body/ Maximum width of the body) and P2 (= Total length/ Maximum height of the body), which were found to be negative curvilinearly related. Trophic indices (Ti) of individual fish species were determined on the basis of trophic level of each food item and the fractions of all food items consumed by fish species, which ranged from 1 for exclusively herbivorous species to 3 for carnivorous species. A negative logarithmic relationship between P1 and Ti indicates that laterally compressed fish species with deep bodies feed on lower trophic levels in the food web. On the other hand, dorso-ventrally flattened species with low P1 have higher trophic indices than those with high P1. The positive logarithmic relationship between P2 and Ti also indicates that short, deep-bodied fish species representing low P2 values feed on lower trophic levels whereas slender, long-bodied species with high P2 values feed on higher trophic levels. The body shapes, measured as simple body proportions of the definitions of P1 and P2, can therefore be used to predict feeding habits of fish.

Multiscale Investigation of Water Chemistry Effects on Fish Guild Species Richness in Regulated and Nonregulated Rivers of India's Western Ghats: Implications for Restoration

“…Fish species were classified based on depth or water column use as follows: surface dwellers, mid-column dwellers, or bottom dwellers (Lowe-McConnell 1975, 1987Arunachalam 2000;Bhat 2002). Fishes' feeding preferences were categorized as phytophagous (algivore, herbivore, and detritivore), heterotrophic (insectivore and carnivore), or omnivorous (Arunachalam 2000;Bhat 2002;Weliange and Amarsinghe 2007;Johnson and Arunachalam 2012;Froese and Pauly 2016). The flow responses of fish species were classified as eurytopic, limnophilic, or rheophilic (Aarts and Nienhuis 2003;Chakrabarty and Homechaudhuri 2013).…”

“…Earlier studies on fish diversity have described functional responses of fish guilds to riverine habitat gradients or stream characteristics (De Silva et al. ; Bhat ; Weliange and Amarsinghe ; Johnson and Arunachalam ; Oliveira et al. ; Chakrabarty and Homechaudhuri ).…”

“…Earlier studies on fish diversity have described functional responses of fish guilds to riverine habitat gradients or stream characteristics (De Silva et al 1979;Bhat 2004;Weliange and Amarsinghe 2007;Johnson and Arunachalam 2012;Oliveira et al 2012;Chakrabarty and Homechaudhuri 2013). In India, despite a highly diverse freshwater fish fauna and numerous taxonomic studies, factors driving persistence of various fish guilds in hydrologically altered and human-modified river systems remain less studied (Jayaram 2010;Kundu et al 2014;Atkore et al 2017;Grubh and Winemiller 2018;Jumani et al 2018).…”

Weight–Length Relationship Analysis Revealing the Impacts of Multiple Factors on Body Shape of Fish in China

“…The study of body morphology in relation to feeding ecology in fish species was pioneered by Keast and Webb in 1966 at a small Canadian lake [37,38]. Subsequently, Catella and Petrere (1998) reported that body shapes of fish species from a floodplain lake in Brazil were related to their feeding habits [27].…”

Diet and Dietary Habits of The Mystus gulio from The Cianjur Estuaries, Indonesia

“…Food activities of fish occur by stim- ulation (Lall & Tibbets, 2009;Nanjo et al, 2008) that arises due to the color and smell of food (Weliange & Amarasinghe, 2007). In addition, fish are interested in moving objects in the water.…”