Feeding preference of herbivorous fish: Family Scaridae

Abstract

Parrotfish is one of dominant species in Indo-Pacific areas which have 9 genera and 83 species. In ecological perspective, the feeding behaviours of these fish very important, due to control population of algae in coral reef ecosystem. They used their jaw to excavate and scrape alga which living on coral substrata, so sometime resulted on erosion in substrates and coral. The aim of this research to record the diet preference of Scariids fish in NCF Putri Menjangan conservation area, Bali on January to february 2020. Group of Scariids fish was recorded by underwater camera for one minute then the bites scared were calculated manually and photographed. The result of study showed that 10 species from two genera (Chlorurus and Scarus) was dominantly herbivorous fish in this area. The highest number of fish bites at station 1 was obtained from S. qouyi species with a total of 41.27 bpm, while stations 2 and 3 were obtained from S. rivulatus species with a number of 40.96 bpm and 41.59 bpm, respectively. The majority of parrotfish species found chose to forage on dead coral with algae substrates because the water conditions were not optimal for the growth of coral, so many corals died and their skeletons were overgrown by algae.