Ecology Summary - Balistes vetula

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Main Ref.	Randall, J.E., 1967
Remarks	Found in coral reef environments, near the bottom, from shallow sandy or grassy areas to the upper slope of the reef. Employs different feeding behaviours to capture and manipulate different type of prey, for example, it uses suction feeding to capture worms and other soft prey, while it feeds on crabs and sea urchins by directly biting off parts of the prey (Ref. 45549). Sessile invertebrate feeder (Ref. 57616).

Main Ref.

Randall, J.E., 1967

Remarks

Found in coral reef environments, near the bottom, from shallow sandy or grassy areas to the upper slope of the reef. Employs different feeding behaviours to capture and manipulate different type of prey, for example, it uses suction feeding to capture worms and other soft prey, while it feeds on crabs and sea urchins by directly biting off parts of the prey (Ref. 45549). Sessile invertebrate feeder (Ref. 57616).

Aquatic zones / Water bodies

	Marine - Neritic	Marine - Oceanic	Brackishwater	Freshwater
Marine zones / Brackish and freshwater bodies	supra-littoral zone littoral zone sublittoral zone	epipelagic mesopelagic epipelagic abyssopelagic hadopelagic	estuaries/lagoons/brackish seas mangroves marshes/swamps	rivers/streams lakes/ponds caves exclusively in caves

Highighted items on the list are where Balistes vetula may be found.

Habitat

Substrate	Soft Bottom Hard Bottom;
Substrate Ref.
Special habitats	Beds: sea grass; Coral Reefs;
Special habitats Ref.

Associations

Ref.
Associations
Associated with	Cleaned by Pomacanthus paru observed at the reefs of the Abrolhos Archipelago, off eastern Brazil (Ref. 40094).
Association remarks
Parasitism

Feeding

Feeding type	mainly animals (troph. 2.8 and up)
Feeding type Ref.	Randall, J.E., 1967
Feeding habit	hunting macrofauna (predator)
Feeding habit Ref.	Dominici-Arosemena, A. and M. Wolff, 2005

Trophic Level(s)

Estimation method	Original sample		Unfished population		Remark
Estimation method	Troph	s.e.	Troph	s.e.	Remark
From diet composition	3.82	0.13	3.44	0.44	Troph of juv./adults from 2 studies.
From individual food items	3.34	0.45			Trophic level estimated from a number of food items using a randomized resampling routine.
Ref.	Randall, J.E., 1967

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