Recruitment of pelagic fish populations is believed to be regulated during the planktonic larval stage due to high rates of mortality during the early life stages. Starvation is thought to be one of the main sources of mortality, despite the fact that there is rarely a strong correlation between the feeding success of larval fish and food availability as measured in the field. This lack of relationship may be caused in part by (i) inadequate sampling of larval fish prey and (ii) the use of total zooplankton abundance or biomass as proxies for larval food availability. Many feeding studies rely on measures of average prey abundance which do not adequately capture the variability, or patchiness, of the prey field as experienced by larval fish. Previous studies have shown that larvae may rely on these patches to increase their feeding success. I assess the variability in the availability of larval fish prey over a range of scales and model the small-scale distribution of prey in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. I show that the greatest variability in zooplankton abundance existed at the meter scale, and that larval fish prey were not randomly distributed within the upper mixed layer. This will impact both how well we can model the stochastic nature of larval fish cohorts, as well as how well we can study larval fish feeding from gut content analyses. Expanding on six years of previous lab and field studies on larval Radiated Shanny (Ulvaria subbifurcata) from Conception Bay, Newfoundland, I assess the feeding success, niche breadth (S) and weight-specific feeding rates (SPC, d-1) of the larvae to determine whether there are size-based patterns evident across the years. I found that both the amount of food in the guts and the niche breadth of larvae increased with larval size. There was a shift from low to high SPC with increasing larval size, suggesting that foraging success increases as the larvae grow. My results suggest that efforts should be made to estimate the variability of prey abundance at scales relevant to larval fish foraging rather than using large-scale average abundance estimates, since small-scale prey patchiness likely plays a role in larval fish feeding dynamics. In addition, the characteristics of zooplankton (density, size and behaviour) should be assessed as not all zooplankton are preyed upon equally by all sizes of larval fish. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that indices based on averages fail to account for the variability in the environment and in individual larval fish, which may be confounding the relationship between food availability and larval growth.

Recruitment of pelagic fish populations is believed to be regulated during the planktonic larval stage due to high rates of mortality during the early life stages. Starvation is thought to be one of the main sources of mortality, despite the fact that there is rarely a strong correlation between the feeding success of larval fish and food availability as measured in the field. This lack of relationship may be caused in part by (i) inadequate sampling of larval fish prey and (ii) the use of total zooplankton abundance or biomass as proxies for larval food availability. Many feeding studies rely on measures of average prey abundance which do not adequately capture the variability, or patchiness, of the prey field as experienced by larval fish. Previous studies have shown that larvae may rely on these patches to increase their feeding success. I assess the variability in the availability of larval fish prey over a range of scales and model the small-scale distribution of prey in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. I show that the greatest variability in zooplankton abundance existed at the meter scale, and that larval fish prey were not randomly distributed within the upper mixed layer. This will impact both how well we can model the stochastic nature of larval fish cohorts, as well as how well we can study larval fish feeding from gut content analyses. Expanding on six years of previous lab and field studies on larval Radiated Shanny (Ulvaria subbifurcata) from Conception Bay, Newfoundland, I assess the feeding success, niche breadth (S) and weight-specific feeding rates (SPC, d-1) of the larvae to determine whether there are size-based patterns evident across the years. I found that both the amount of food in the guts and the niche breadth of larvae increased with larval size. There was a shift from low to high SPC with increasing larval size, suggesting that foraging success increases as the larvae grow. My results suggest that efforts should be made to estimate the variability of prey abundance at scales relevant to larval fish foraging rather than using large-scale average abundance estimates, since small-scale prey patchiness likely plays a role in larval fish feeding dynamics. In addition, the characteristics of zooplankton (density, size and behaviour) should be assessed as not all zooplankton are preyed upon equally by all sizes of larval fish. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that indices based on averages fail to account for the variability in the environment and in individual larval fish, which may be confounding the relationship between food availability and larval growth.