Abstract
The food and feeding habits of the shrimp Solenocera melantho off Visakhapatnam coast were studied qualitatively and quantitatively. Feeding intensity differs in relation to gender, size, season and stage of maturity. Detritus was the major component of the food consumed, followed by crustaceans, molluscs, foraminiferans, fish remains, eggs; sand was also found as one of the gut contents. Diet preference in males and females was similar, but varied with size and season. The index of preponderance of detritus was 50.88% in males and 47.16% in females. Variation in feeding intensity was noticed in relation to size, months and season. The overall feeding intensity in males and females was categorized as actively fed (21.52% and 40.78% respectively), moderately fed (22.07%, 19.72%) and poorly fed (14.07%, 27.03%) respectively. S. melantho may designate as an omnivorous detritivore with scavenging activity.
Highlights
Food is as diverse as the feeding habits of the organisms, whereas the feeding habit is determined by the habitat
The food and feeding habits of commercially important shrimps have been carried out by many investigators, but not much information is available on Solenocera species, except those of Kunju (1968) on Solenocera indica (S. crassicornis), Hall (1962) on S. alticarinata and S. subnuda, Froglia and Gramitto (1987) on S. membranacea, Aravindakshan and Karbhari (1994) and Dineshbabu and Manissery (2009) on S. choprai
It was followed by Monthly variation Detritus ranked first in all months in males and females except in August and October when it occupied the second position within males, whereas in females it was in August
Summary
Food is as diverse as the feeding habits of the organisms, whereas the feeding habit is determined by the habitat. S. melantho is commonly known as the deep water mud shrimp; it can be seen buried on soft bottoms at depths between 50-152 m (Holthuis, 1980) and is widely distributed in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, The Phillipines, Indonesia (Crosnier, 1984) and on East and West coasts of India (Muthu, 1971; George, 1979). It contributes with about 7.2% to the total shrimp landings at Visakhapatnam Fishing Harbour (Maheswarudu et al., 2014, 2015) and is an important source of shrimp protein in the local markets. An attempt was made to study the qualitative and quantitative analysis of food and feeding intensity in relation to season, gender, size and stage of maturity of S. melantho (De Man, 1907) off Visakhapatnam coast
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