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Discerning the dietary habits of the smooth butterfly ray Gymnura lessae using two distinct methods, otolith identification and metagenetics
Author(s) -
Jargowsky Matthew B.,
Cooper Pearce T.,
Ajemian Matthew J.,
Colvin Michael E.,
Drymon J. Marcus
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of fish biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1095-8649
pISSN - 0022-1112
DOI - 10.1111/jfb.14221
Subject(s) - biology , otolith , sciaenidae , predation , bay , trawling , zoology , ecology , fishery , identification (biology) , fish <actinopterygii> , civil engineering , engineering
Two different methods, metagenetics and free‐otolith identification, were used to identify prey in the stomach contents of 531 Gymnura lessae captured by trawling in Mobile Bay, Alabama 2016–2018. Both methods were found to produce analogous results and were therefore combined into a single complete dataset. All prey were teleosts; the families Sciaenidae and Engraulidae were the most important prey (prey specie index of relative importance 89.3% I PSRI ). Multivariate analyses indicated that the diet of G. lessae varied with sex and seasonality. Specifically, variability was probably due to morphologically larger females consuming larger teleost prey species compared with males, whereas seasonal variability was probably due to changes in the available prey community composition. The findings indicate that both metagenetics and free otolith identification, used independently or complementarily, offer robust means of characterising dietary habits for teleost‐specialised species such as G. lessae , which may play an important role in the structure and maintenance of coastal food webs such as those in Mobile Bay.

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