Empirical verification of feeding selectivity of larval and juvenile pelagic fishes using in situ zooplankton communities

Most studies on the feeding ecology of larvae and juveniles of commercially important pelagic fishes have used field-based approaches. However, due to possible biases related to net sampling, it is uncertain whether the results obtained from those studies truly represent the situation of live fish in the sea. Here we investigated the feeding ecology of pelagic fishes through a laboratory experiment minimizing the biases inherent in field net sampling. In the experiment, hatchery-reared juvenile chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus) and larval/juvenile Japanese anchovy (Engraulis japonicus) were fed with wild-caught zooplankton assemblages collected from around Hakatajima Island in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan. The relationships between fish size and prey number in the gut, and the selectivity on each prey organism were determined. As a result, in both species, prey number and size increased with body size, and the fish showed strong selectivity for crustaceans including copepodites and adults..., Data were collected from feeding experiment using larval japanese anchovy and juvenile chub mackerel., , # Empirical verification of feeding selectivity of larval and juvenile pelagic fishes using in situ zooplankton communities Description of uploaded data mackerel_juvenile_size_prey_relationship.csv anchovy_larvae_size_prey_relationship.csv These files include data of; individual ID (as id), the standard length of individuals in mm (as Standard_length_mm), taxonomical category of the ingested prey (as taxonomical_category), length and width of each prey item, the condition of each preys (as class; C: the morphology of prey individuals were almost completely maintained, PB: morphology was partly broken but still could measure width and length precisely, B: morphology has largely broken so could not measure width and length), prey numbers in the gut of each tested fishes and trial (representing from which of three trials samples were obtained from). These data were used for determining the i) relationships between prey number in the gut and standard length and ii) relationships between...