Feeding Ecology of Fishes – A Mini Review

Fishes constitute more than half of the vertebrates,  inhabiting almost every aquatic habitat of the world and  form an inexpensive source of vital nutrients. The  depletion of fishery stocks as a result of anthropogenic  interferences is evident worldwide and mandates an  urgent need to address the cause before rate of loss  exceeds the limit. This makes the assessment of various  aspects of fish, especially their feeding ecology quite  imperative for developing conservation and  management strategies. Food forms a vital factor for  fishes required chiefly for growth and reproduction in  fishes and its qualitative or quantitative variation is influenced by various biotic and abiotic factors.  Amongst the various attributes influencing fishes, food  and feeding constitute a vital aspect that impacts the  growth and general wellbeing of the fish. Feeding  ecology of a fish is directly linked to its population  dynamics and helps in understanding of various aspects  of fish like habitat preference, competition, prey  selectivity, energy transfer etc. Under this backdrop the  current review was drafted to acquire knowledge about  the three major aspects of feeding ecology of fish i.e.,  analysis of the gut contents, feeding biology and prey  selectivity. The analysis of gut contents helps to identify  the prey diversity and abundance consumed by a fish.  Feeding biology helps to evaluate the acceptability of the  prey by depicting the correlation between biology of the  fish and its food preferences. Prey selectivity deals with  the evaluation of prey choice depicting the reason  behind choice of one prey over the other.