Discerning the dietary habits of the smooth butterfly ray Gymnura lessae using two distinct methods, otolith identification and metagenetics

• Published in: Journal of fish biology Vol. 96; no. 2; pp. 434 - 443
• Main Authors: Jargowsky, Matthew B., Cooper, Pearce T., Ajemian, Matthew J., Colvin, Michael E., Drymon, J. Marcus
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-02-2020; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Animals; Butterflies & moths; Coastal structures; Community composition; Diet; Diet - veterinary; Feeding Behavior - physiology; Female; Females; Food Chain; Food chains; Food webs; Gastrointestinal Contents; Gymnura; Gymnura lessae; Identification; Identification methods; Male; Males; Marine fishes; metagenetics; Metagenomics; Otolithic Membrane; otoliths; Prey; prey identification; Production methods; Seasonal variation; Seasonal variations; Seasonality; Skates, Fish - physiology; smooth butterfly ray; Stomach content; stomach contents; Trawling; Mobile Bay; smooth butterfly ray; Gymnura lessae; stomach contents; otoliths; prey identification; metagenetics
• ISSN: 0022-1112; 1095-8649
• DOI: 10.1111/jfb.14221

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% IPSRI). 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.