BRAY and EBELING: THREE "PICKER-TYPE" FISHES 



night, we have never seen an exposed senorita 

 either over the reef or the surrounding sand flats. 



Habitat 



Kelp perch were mostly restricted to the canopy, 

 whereas senoritas were more evenly distributed in 

 the water column (Table 3). The kelp perch, whose 

 frequency of occurrence was highly correlated 

 with kelp density, seemed to require the close 

 presence of kelp and was most abundant in the 

 thick of the canopy far above relatively flat bottom 

 areas. Although most frequently filmed in or near 

 the canopy, senoritas ranged throughout the kelp 

 beds and over relatively naked areas of reef. They 

 were recorded from 48% of all cinetransects, as 

 compared to but 26% for kelp perch. 



White seaperch were more bottom-oriented 

 than the others, even though they were oc- 

 casionally seen schooling in mid-water and singly 

 in the canopy. The occurred most frequently in 

 cinetransects taken over areas of sparse kelp and 

 flat bottom at the margins of reefs and kelp beds, 

 but large numbers have also been seen 

 sporadically in areas of highest reef and densest 



kelp. The cinetransects were limited to areas of 

 reef and kelp and the immediate environs and did 

 not cover the white seaperch's relatively broad 

 range of habitats. Although the kelp perch and 

 senorita are more or less restricted to the habitats 

 covered by the cinetransects, the white seaperch 

 ranges far afield throughout the marginal sandy 

 areas to bays and submerged artifacts, such as 

 piers and docks. Its frequency of occurrence 

 among cinetransects, 10%, was by far the lowest of 

 the three species. 



Resource Breadth 



Food 



Both as a species and as individuals, the kelp 

 perch had the greatest food breadth (Table 4, B,b). 

 The kelp perch ate more items (S) than the white 

 seaperch, though amounts were about equally 

 even in distribution (B/S). The senorita actually 

 ate the most items, but in variable and often small 

 amounts. Although the median number of items in 

 individual foreguts (.s') was the same for all three 

 species, division between one- and multi-item 



Table 3. -Distributions of the three fishes among scored categories of four habitat parameters. Parameters of kelp density and density 

 of bottom algae are scored from 1 (absent) to 5 (very dense); bottom relief from 1 (flat) to 5 (high relief rock); and position in water 

 column as C, the canopy within about 2-3 m of the surface, or B, the bottom and immediately overlying waters. Frequency is given as the 

 actual percent (given as whole percent) of total cinetransects scored in the particular category, and as the percent standardized (given 

 as 0.1%) by the total films in each category (see text). 



Table 4. -Food breadths of the three fishes. The text defines the measure B of resource breadth. S is the number of 

 food items; B/S measures the evenness of distribution of proportionate amounts among the S items; medians and 

 ranges (in parentheses) describe the individual (fish) variates; and the Kruskal-Wallis H statistic, distributed as 

 chi-square with 2 df , tests for differences among species in the sample variates. 



'Significant at P<0.005 



823 



