Feeding behaviour, species associations and natural diets of 10 Cyprinid fish species from South-West Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Sri Lanka has been a favored region for studies of fish assemblages in tropical streams. Food, habitats, reproduction and species segregation have been in focus. The present paper introduces a new approach, comparing feeding behavior of 10 indigenous cyprinid species as observed in aquaria under standardized conditions. It is found that species with similar feeding habits (as to substrate preferences and some characteristics of snapping and processing) are largely separated in their typical habitats in the wild. This conclusion is similar to what others, working with largely the same species in the same region, have found, namely that co-existing species differ in their food preferences. But our conclusion was arrived at independently on the basis of different data. Advantages of behavior studies in this context are discussed, such as identification of evolutionary adaptations in behavior and added information on where in their common habitat co-occurring species collect certain food items that are commonly found in gut content analyses.