Contemporary Studies on Fish Feeding (Developments in Environmental Biology of Fishes, 7)

Oversized hardcover, recent reprint of the original 1986 edition, 334 pages, b&w illustrations, NOT ex-library. Shipping weight over 1kg. A university stamp on the rear endpapers; minor handling wear. Book is clean and bright with unmarked text, free of inscriptions, firmly bound. Issued without a dust jacket. -- From gut contents to consumption rates: the influential GUTSHOP '84 papers that made fish feeding quantifiable across lab, field, and models. -- This is a collection of studies that dissect the complex question of why and how fish feed. The 27 papers compiled here move far beyond simple diet descriptions to tackle the core methodological, physiological, behavioral, and ecological challenges inherent in the field. The book features a critical debate on the efficacy of various gastric evacuation models for estimating daily food consumption, exploring the nuances of linear versus logarithmic emptying patterns and the statistical pitfalls of variance and skewed data. This practical focus extends to solving common fieldwork problems, offering quantitative assessments of the bias introduced by regurgitation in trawl-caught specimens and proposing novel metrics like the Percent Fullness index to standardize stomach content analysis. Venturing inside the organism, the book links feeding directly to physiology and life history. It provides detailed examinations of digestive processes, from the enzymatic and morphological changes in larval guts - drawing on important Japanese literature - to the mechanisms of nutrient absorption like pinocytosis. Case studies illuminate the profound connection between diet, growth, and metabolic processes such as ammonium excretion in salt marsh fishes. The text also explores physiological adaptations to environmental extremes, contrasting the starvation tolerance and overwintering strategies of species like largemouth bass and yellow perch, revealing differences in fat storage and hypoxia tolerance that dictate survival. The book's exploration of behavioral ecology remains current, presenting studies that test and challenge the assumptions of optimal foraging theory. Through controlled experiments with species like sticklebacks and Gambusia, it investigates the intricate decision-making processes governing when to feed, what to eat, and how to balance foraging with competing motivations like nest defense. The role of predator experience, energetic tradeoffs, and even cognitive processes in shaping prey selection is thoroughly analyzed. Furthermore, it employs sophisticated modeling to predict the complex feeding strategies of parasitic lampreys, which must optimize energy intake against the risk of host mortality. Finally, this collection scales up from the individual to the ecosystem, providing powerful case studies on the community-wide consequences of feeding. It details how predator-prey interactions and competition structure entire fish assemblages, from piscivory on coral reefs to resource partitioning among surfperches. Several chapters present landmark research that continues to inform modern ecology, including the classic demonstration of a morphological shift in the gill rakers of Lake Michigan cisco in response to competition from invasive alewives and the crucial role of non-lethal predator effects in mediating habitat use and intensifying competition among their prey. -- Distinctive for its focus on quantification and bias, this volume remains a go-to reference when converting diets to consumption and embedding feeding into bioenergetics and multispecies models. The evacuation functions, sampling cautions, and cross-system comparisons continue to underpin fisheries assessment and ecosystem forecasting, and they complement modern tools such as stable isotopes and DNA metabarcoding by grounding them in process-based rates. Useful for researchers and managers designing studies, calibrating models, and interpreting long-term change.