Diet of juveniles of the snook Centropomus parallelus Poey, 1860 in the south of Bahia, Brasil

Abstract

The objective of this work was to study the diet of juveniles of the snook Centropomus parallelus in natural environment. A total of 228 individuals were captured with long-line from Lagoa Encantada, Ilheus, Bahia State, between December 2003 and April 2004. After capture, the juvenile individuals were measured (13 to 35.9 cm) and transported in ice to the laboratory. It was observed that 90% of the stomach items consisted of small animals, confirming that snooks are a highly carnivorous species. Fish represented 36% of the findings and corresponded to 70% of the total stomach content weight. In addition, this item presented the highest indexes of occurrence and numerical frequencies, and an Alimentary Importance Index of 0.48, indicating that ichthyophagy is the preferential alimentary habit of juveniles of the snook C. parallelus. Among the fish, those of genus Astyanax were present in 17.3% of the analyzed stomachs, corresponding to 34.8% of the total stomach content weight.