• Korean Journal of Ichthyology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.123-128
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• 2008

The foraging behavior of the beauty goby, Pterogobius zacalles, was studied at Mutu Bay, Aomori province, Japan. P. zacalles harvested invertebrates prey from benthic substrates by using two distinct foraging modes: picking substrate among boulders and sucking surface of boulder. Among others, picking substrate among boulders was primarily used foraging mode. The foraging modes of P. zacalles were followed by three stages: searching for prey, feeding and chewing. For foraging, it takes less time to suck out the surface of boulder than pick up substrate among boulders, because the resting site of P. zacalles is close to the place where they do sucking. The diets of P. zacalles primarily consisted of benthic amphipods regardless of their foraging modes. Only the difference was that they can get bigger amphipods when they did picking rather than sucking. Even though it needs more time and energy to do picking, P. zacalles was compensated by getting a high-calorie diet eventually, therefore prey size can be the determinant of their foraging modes.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.207-215
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• 2017

Body scales directly exposed to external environments can be an important factor to understand various characteristics of a species such as habitat features, life history and basic ecology. In this study, we compared size and morphology of dorsal, outermost dorsal, keeled dorsal and ventral scales of total nine snake species in Korea; Oocatochus rufodorsatus, Elaphe dione, Rhabdophis tigrinus, Amphiesma vibakari, Dinodon rufozonatum, Hierophis spinalis in the Colubridae and Gloydius ussuriensis, G. brevicaudus, G. saxatilis in the Viperidae. The morphological characteristics of the scales seem to well reflect foraging modes and moving activity of both families. Uniquely D. rufozonatum had a diamond shape dorsal scale and had the greatest and smallest value of the ratio of width/length of dorsal and ventral scales, respectively. O. rufodorsatus, D. rufozonatum and H. spinalis did not have keeled dorsal scales and E. dione had keel on the few of dorsal scales. In addition, morphological characteristics of scales of three viper species were closely consistent with previously known phylogenetic relationships.