Feeding Habits of Age-0 Striped Bass, Morone saxatilis, in the Mid-Hudson River Estuary: Temporal, Spatial, and Ontogenetic Variation

We quantified temporal and spatial variability in diets of 950 juvenile (age-0) striped bass in the Hudson River estuary. We used canonical correspondence analysis to assess the roles of temporal and spatial habitat variability in juvenile diet variation. We found that juvenile striped bass diets in the Hudson River were only modestly comparable to diets in other east coast estuaries. Among-year differences (51.4%) and spatial differences (41.9%) were substantially associated with juvenile striped bass diet. We found ontogeny (2.8%) and within-season variation (9.5%) to only weakly associate with diet variation. Our results indicate that an understanding of the temporal and spatial variation within the Hudson River estuary is vital in understanding variation in feeding by resident juvenile fish.