Feeding behaviour of parrotfishes of the genus Scarus in Redang Island

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the feeding rate of Scarus sp. at different time period in a day, correlation between the abundance of Scarus sp. and bethic composition and to identify the species of seaweed collected from their grazed substratum. The sampling for this study was conducted at 4 sites located at Long beach, Redang Island. As for the feeding rate study, 3 individuals for each chose adult species (S. ghobban, S. rivulatus and S. niger) and juveniles at different time periods (9 am, 12 pm and 4pm). Overall, the feeding rate is not significantly different (P > 0.05) between species but showed significant different (P < 0.05) when compared to different time periods. A total of 8 species of the genus Scarus were encountered and identified throughout 4 sampling sites and the relationship between the abundance of Scarus sp. and benthic composition was determined using Spearman rank correlation. It was found that the abundance of both adult and juvenile Scarus sp. is significantly correlated with the percentage of dead coral with algae (DCA) (rs = 0.4168, P = 0.0428) but showed no correlation with the percentage of live coral (rs = -0.019, P = 0.94283) in all sampling sites.