Advance knowledge of which species and groups of marine and estuarine animals occurring in shelf waters include any Syngnathid species in their diets,within the state of South Australia.
Limited data exists on the relative importance of Syngnathids in the food chain along Australia's temperate southern coast.
Anecdotally, observations by the project administrator and via personal communication with a small number of colleagues suggest that the biomass of mostly smaller inshore Syngnathids can be large, especially in the warm season. This includes some pipefish and one seahorse (members of the following genuses are commonly seen in considerable numbers in snorkel and scuba depths in this State:Histiogamphelus,Stigmatopora, Vanacampus,also the species Pugnose and Brushtail Pipefish, and Hippocampus breviceps seahorses occasionally appear in large numbers).
The project administrator believes this inshore biomass is likely to represent an important component of the diet of many naturally occurring predators, including some bony and cartilaginous fishes,crabs,cuttlefish,octopuses, seabirds such as penguins and cormorants, and pinnipeds including the endangered Australian Sealion.
This project is a crude 'seed project ' thus will accept provisional predator species listings, because it is hard to prove that any given predator eats Syngnathids without killing the predator and examining the gut content.
The project is very likely to need refinement over time. less ↑