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closeFeeding habit of Bolbometopon muricatum
Posted by Helfgott on 21 Dec 2012 at 18:07 GMT
I was a Peace Corps Volunteer on Ngatik Atoll (Sahpwafik Atoll) in FSM in 1975. We encountered the Giant Humpheaded Parrotfish (Known as Kamiek, translated as "head of Fire"). I witnessed several observations of their feeding on coral at high tide. They would feed on the coral vertically and pound the coral with their massive heads, actually licking their tails out of the water. The flicking tails were actually a sign locals would look for in netting these beautiful large coral fish. You could actually hear the pounding of the coral under water a great distance away.
RE: Feeding habit of Bolbometopon muricatum
munoz69 replied to Helfgott on 23 Dec 2012 at 19:41 GMT
Given the prior information regarding the feeding habits of "Bolbometopon", we certainly conducted our observations with the coral ramming behavior in mind. In fact, all feeding events from live coral that we observed included grazing and very careful browsing of particular coral colonies, mostly "Pocillopora" spp. We never witnessed such ramming behavior. This is a good observation and illustrates another similarity between the cephalic hump of "Bolbometopon" and the classic example of sexual selection that we mention in the paper, the horns of bighorn sheep. Like "Bolbometopon", the horns of bighorn sheep can serve a dual purpose and are used for fighting but also as tools to break open cactus which are then consumed.