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Integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of Cookiecutter Sharks

The Cookiecutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) is an ectoparasitic, mesopelagic shark that is known for removing plugs of tissue from larger prey, including teleosts, chondrichthyans, cephalopods, and marine mammals. Although this species is widely distributed throughout the world’s tropical and sub...

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Autores principales: Carlisle, Aaron B., Allan, Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz, Kim, Sora L., Meyer, Lauren, Port, Jesse, Scherrer, Stephen, O’Sullivan, John
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8175345/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34083578
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89903-z
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author Carlisle, Aaron B.
Allan, Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz
Kim, Sora L.
Meyer, Lauren
Port, Jesse
Scherrer, Stephen
O’Sullivan, John
author_facet Carlisle, Aaron B.
Allan, Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz
Kim, Sora L.
Meyer, Lauren
Port, Jesse
Scherrer, Stephen
O’Sullivan, John
author_sort Carlisle, Aaron B.
collection PubMed
description The Cookiecutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) is an ectoparasitic, mesopelagic shark that is known for removing plugs of tissue from larger prey, including teleosts, chondrichthyans, cephalopods, and marine mammals. Although this species is widely distributed throughout the world’s tropical and subtropical oceanic waters, like many deep-water species, it remains very poorly understood due to its mesopelagic distribution. We used a suite of biochemical tracers, including stable isotope analysis (SIA), fatty acid analysis (FAA), and environmental DNA (eDNA), to investigate the trophic ecology of this species in the Central Pacific around Hawaii. We found that large epipelagic prey constituted a relatively minor part of the overall diet. Surprisingly, small micronektonic and forage species (meso- and epipelagic) are the most important prey group for Cookiecutter sharks across the studied size range (17–43 cm total length), with larger mesopelagic species or species that exhibit diel vertical migration also being important prey. These results were consistent across all the tracer techniques employed. Our results indicate that Cookiecutter sharks play a unique role in pelagic food webs, feeding on prey ranging from the largest apex predators to small, low trophic level species, in particular those that overlap with the depth distribution of the sharks throughout the diel cycle. We also found evidence of a potential shift in diet and/or habitat with size and season. Environmental DNA metabarcoding revealed new prey items for Cookiecutter sharks while also demonstrating that eDNA can be used to identify recent prey in stomachs frozen for extended periods. Integrating across chemical tracers is a powerful tool for investigating the ecology of elusive and difficult to study species, such as meso- and bathypelagic chondrichthyans, and can increase the amount of information gained from small sample sizes. Better resolving the foraging ecology of these mesopelagic predators is critical for effective conservation and management of these taxa and ecosystems, which are intrinsically vulnerable to overfishing and exploitation.
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spelling pubmed-81753452021-06-04 Integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of Cookiecutter Sharks Carlisle, Aaron B. Allan, Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz Kim, Sora L. Meyer, Lauren Port, Jesse Scherrer, Stephen O’Sullivan, John Sci Rep Article The Cookiecutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) is an ectoparasitic, mesopelagic shark that is known for removing plugs of tissue from larger prey, including teleosts, chondrichthyans, cephalopods, and marine mammals. Although this species is widely distributed throughout the world’s tropical and subtropical oceanic waters, like many deep-water species, it remains very poorly understood due to its mesopelagic distribution. We used a suite of biochemical tracers, including stable isotope analysis (SIA), fatty acid analysis (FAA), and environmental DNA (eDNA), to investigate the trophic ecology of this species in the Central Pacific around Hawaii. We found that large epipelagic prey constituted a relatively minor part of the overall diet. Surprisingly, small micronektonic and forage species (meso- and epipelagic) are the most important prey group for Cookiecutter sharks across the studied size range (17–43 cm total length), with larger mesopelagic species or species that exhibit diel vertical migration also being important prey. These results were consistent across all the tracer techniques employed. Our results indicate that Cookiecutter sharks play a unique role in pelagic food webs, feeding on prey ranging from the largest apex predators to small, low trophic level species, in particular those that overlap with the depth distribution of the sharks throughout the diel cycle. We also found evidence of a potential shift in diet and/or habitat with size and season. Environmental DNA metabarcoding revealed new prey items for Cookiecutter sharks while also demonstrating that eDNA can be used to identify recent prey in stomachs frozen for extended periods. Integrating across chemical tracers is a powerful tool for investigating the ecology of elusive and difficult to study species, such as meso- and bathypelagic chondrichthyans, and can increase the amount of information gained from small sample sizes. Better resolving the foraging ecology of these mesopelagic predators is critical for effective conservation and management of these taxa and ecosystems, which are intrinsically vulnerable to overfishing and exploitation. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-06-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8175345/ /pubmed/34083578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89903-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Carlisle, Aaron B.
Allan, Elizabeth Andruszkiewicz
Kim, Sora L.
Meyer, Lauren
Port, Jesse
Scherrer, Stephen
O’Sullivan, John
Integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of Cookiecutter Sharks
title Integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of Cookiecutter Sharks
title_full Integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of Cookiecutter Sharks
title_fullStr Integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of Cookiecutter Sharks
title_full_unstemmed Integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of Cookiecutter Sharks
title_short Integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of Cookiecutter Sharks
title_sort integrating multiple chemical tracers to elucidate the diet and habitat of cookiecutter sharks
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8175345/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34083578
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89903-z
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