Meeting Abstract
A natural gap in knowledge is created when scientists make inferences about animals in the wild by conducting experiments on captive animals. This gap is created by imposing limits to animal behaviors that are not experienced in the wild. We sought to bridge this gap by filming polyphenic bluegill feeding in the wild. Given the restrictions of lab aquaria, we hypothesized that wild fish will use more ram during feeding than captive fish. Additionally, we hypothesized that the differences in feeding behaviors that we observed in the lab between ecomorphs (littoral and pelagic) will be observed in the wild. To address these hypotheses we fed fish in the view of a GoPro camera array, which allowed us to film feeding events in 3D. We found that wild fish produced a significantly larger relative gape while using more ram to capture their prey. Additionally, wild fish displayed a faster gape velocity than fish filmed in the lab. Previous research in the lab has shown that littoral bluegills use more ram than pelagic bluegills during feeding. This relationship was also seen in wild feeding events with littoral fish using more than double the amount of ram than pelagic fish. With this study we highlighted some of the constraints imposed on fish when bringing them to the lab for experimentation. Additionally, we showed that pelagic and littoral fish feed differently as was seen in lab experiments.
