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Abstract
No significant differences in appetite (used here in the sense of amount of food consumed over any given 24‐hour period) were found between crabs starved for 28 days and crabs freshly caught from the sea when fed to satiation over a 13‐day period. Crabs from these two feeding history treatments also exhibited the same level and rate of appetite depression. Longer periods of feeding depressed appetite still further. Although feeding may only minimally influence appetite over any two‐ or three‐day time span, feeding to satiation over 13 consecutive days significantly depressed appetite. Experiments, using the predatory crab Ovalipes catharus, tested the effectiveness of starvation for standardising appetite. Individual appetites were highly variable and were not standardised by up to 21 days starvation. At temperatures above 15 °C, Paphies subtriangulata and Callianassa filholi were either cleared from the foregut or were unrecognisable within 6 hours. However, at about 10 °C, these prey could take up to 21 hours to be cleared. Shell fragments were cleared from the foregut by regurgitation after virtually all soft parts had been digested. As crab size increased, crabs were more efficient at ingesting food, took longer to empty a full foregut, and had faster absolute rates of foregut clearance. The upper limit of food intake was determined by foregut volume which was logarithmically related to carapace width. This relationship explained a positive relation found between appetite and carapace width.