Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria 49(3): 311-317, doi: 10.3750/AIEP/02616

First results on the diet of the invasive Pterois miles (Actinopterygii: Scorpaeniformes: Scorpaenidae) in the Hellenic waters

K. Zannaki, M. Corsini-Foka, Th.E. Kampouris, I.E. Batjakas

Corresponding author: K. Zannaki

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Zannaki K, Corsini-Foka M, Kampouris T, Batjakas I (2019) First results on the diet of the invasive Pterois miles (Actinopterygii: Scorpaeniformes: Scorpaenidae) in the Hellenic waters. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria 49(3): 311-317. https://doi.org/10.3750/AIEP/02616

Abstract

The diet composition of devil lionfish, Pterois miles (Bennet, 1828), from the Aegean Sea was investigated. The stomach contents of 42 samples (10 of which were empty) collected between May 2016 and November 2017 from Rhodes Island, Greece, were studied. The diet was composed predominantly of bony fish (78.5% in number, approximately 94.7% in biomass) belonging to a large variety of families, and invertebrates (15.4% in number, 5.1% in biomass), thus indicating an opportunistic feeding behaviour of the species in the study area. The length–length and length–weight relations were also determined.

Keywords

biological invasions, devil firefish, devil lionfish, red lionfish, length–weight relation, stomach content, Mediterranean Sea