DAY-NIGHT FEEDING BY DECAPOD CRUSTACEANS IN A DEEP-WATER BOTTOM COMMUNITY IN THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN

Changes in the composition of the diet, foregut fullness, and the degree of digestion of ingested food were taken into account in determining diel feeding activity of the numerically dominant species of decapod crustaceans dwelling on the Catalan Sea Slope (western Mediterranean). Two 24-h periods were sampled at two different stations on the upper middle slope (between 400 and 710 m) using bottom trawls. Additional foregut fullness data for Aristeus antennatus and Acanthephyra eximia were recorded below 1000 m. The influence of the relatively shallow-living mesopelagic fauna (Pasiphaeidae, Sergestes arcticus, euphausiids, and fishes) over the 24-h cycle apparently had a large effect on the feeding activity rhythms in the deep-sea decapods studied. Species can be classified into two different groups according to their feeding patterns. Thus, species whose diet was based on pelagic prey (Plesionika edwardsi, Plesionika martia, and A. eximia) exhibited a feeding pattern conditioned to the availability of this type of prey. In contrast, in those species in which pelagic prey contributed only a small portion of the diet (A. antennatus, Plesionika acanthonotus, Polycheles typhlops, and Geryon longipes) no variations in the foregut fullness or in the percentage of undigested prey in foreguts during the diel feeding cycles were recorded. The decrease in the influence of the abundance of mesopelagic fauna with depth, with a commonly accepted boundary at around 1000 m would be responsible for the progressive flattening out of activity rhythms among the species dwelling on the lower slope. Foregut fullness values for certain species with broad depth distributions in the Catalan Sea (A. antennatus, A. eximia), would support this hypothesis.