A dietary study of Moroteuthis ingens and other Southern Ocean squid species : combined stomach contents and fatty acid analyses

TL;DRAbstract

The squid fauna are a key component of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, although unfortunately little is known of their distribution, biology and ecology. While the biomass of squid in the Southern Ocean must impose a large amount of predatory pressure on lower trophic levels, few dietary data exist for any of the Southern Ocean species. Conventional dietary analyses of squid are fraught with many sources of bias, and therefore this study has employed complementary stomach contents and fatty acid analyses to investigate aspects of the diet of Southern Ocean squid. The diet of the onychoteuthid Moroteuthis ingens was largely comprised of myctophid fish, and the digestive gland of M. ingens was rich in lipid and found to be an ideal source of fatty acid dietary tracers that are unmodified from the diet. Fatty acid dietary tracers were then applied in combination with stomach contents analyses to investigate the temporal, spatial and sizerelated dietary patterns of M. ingens. Using these com

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