ABSTRACT
Feeding by fi sh is dependent upon their sensory capacities to locate food, their ability to capture (linked to swimming), handle and ingest food items, and their physiological and biochemical capacities to digest and transform ingested nutrients. All of these may depend on environmental factors, which are physical, chemical or biological in nature (review in Kestemont and Baras 2001). Here we describe the main traits of foraging behavior both in the wild and in aquaculture for the different life stages of sea bass. Besides feeding, swimming behavior and social interactions closely interact along with other factors such as intrinsic adaptive repertoire and genetic origin or selection processes. Therefore, the chapter fi rst presents foraging behavior in natural environment, then details foraging in aquaculture environment in relation with environmental factors and fi nally describes other related behavior and illustrates the infl uence of domestication and selection processes on sea bass behavioral traits.
