Feeding habits of the deep sea shrimp aristaeopsis edwardsiana (Johnson 1867) (DECAPODA: ARISTEIDAE) on the southeastern and southern Brazilian coast

• Autor(a) principal: Rezende, Gabriela Amaral de
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Pezzuto, Paulo Ricardo, Dumont, Luiz Felipe Cestari, D'Incao, Fernando
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da FURG (RI FURG)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.furg.br/handle/1/5806
• topic: Deep-sea shrimp; Continental slope; Crustacean; Diet; Scarlet-shrimp; Camarão-de-profundidade; Talude; Crustáceos; Dieta; Camarão-carabineiro

The purpose of this paper is to present the first data concerning the diet of Aristaeopsis edwardsiana, an abundant deep-water predator off Southeastern and Southern Brazilian coast. The diet of A. edwardsiana is composed mainly of benthic and benthopelagic organisms. Crustaceans were the most important prey item in the diet, followed by sediment, fishes, cephalopods, anthozoans, polychaetes, and echinoderms. A redundancy analysis (RDA) was used to assess the relative importance of different environmental and biological variables influencing the feeding habits of Aristaeopsis edwardsiana. Cephalopods are mostly ingested during the spring, inversely, sediment was more important during the summer. Fishes are preferentially ingested by large and sexually mature individuals, while anthozoans are preferred by small individuals. Espiríto-Santo coast presented more individuals that prefer to eat more sediment than fishes or cephalopods. The majority of the stomachs were moderately empty or moderately full and few stomachs were full or very full. Significant differences were found in the percentage of stomach fullness between sex, size and female maturation. Males, small individuals and immature females had the highest values of stomach fullness. The variation in diet appears to be related to gonad development, driving temporal changes in feeding strategy.