DOI: 10.5061/dryad.v0p71
title: Data from: Metabarcoding dietary analysis of coral dwelling predatory fish demonstrates the minor contribution of coral mutualists to their highly partitioned, generalist diet

description: Understanding the role of predators in food webs can be challenging in
 highly diverse predator/prey systems composed of small cryptic species.
 DNA based dietary analysis can supplement predator removal experiments and
 provide high resolution for prey identification. Here we use a
 metabarcoding approach to provide initial insights into the diet and
 functional role of coral-dwelling predatory fish feeding on small
 invertebrates. Fish were collected in Moorea (French Polynesia) where the
 BIOCODE project has generated DNA barcodes for numerous coral associated
 invertebrate species. Pyrosequencing data revealed a total of 292
 Operational Taxonomic Units (OTU) in the gut contents of the arc-eye
 hawkfish (Paracirrhites arcatus), the flame hawkfish (Neocirrhites
 armatus) and the coral croucher (Caracanthus maculatus). One hundred
 forty-nine (51%) of them had species-level matches in reference libraries
 (&gt;98% similarity) while 76 additional OTUs (26%) could be
 identified to higher taxonomic levels. Decapods that have a mutualistic
 relationship with Pocillopora and are typically dominant among coral
 branches, represent a minor contribution of the predators’ diets. Instead,
 predators mainly consumed transient species including pelagic taxa such as
 copepods, chaetognaths and siphonophores suggesting non random feeding
 behavior. We also identified prey species known to have direct negative
 interactions with stony corals, such as Hapalocarcinus sp, a gall crab
 considered a coral parasite, as well as species of vermetid snails known
 for their deleterious effects on coral growth. Pocillopora DNA accounted
 for 20.8% and 20.1% of total number of sequences in the guts of the flame
 hawkfish and coral croucher but it was not detected in the guts of the
 arc-eye hawkfish. Comparison of diets among the three fishes demonstrates
 remarkable partitioning with nearly 80% of prey items consumed by only one
 predator. Overall, the taxonomic resolution provided by the metabarcoding
 approach highlights a highly complex interaction web and demonstrates that
 levels of trophic partitioning among coral reef fishes have likely been
 underestimated. Therefore, we strongly encourage further empirical
 approaches to dietary studies prior to making assumptions of trophic
 equivalency in food web reconstruction.
description: 454 reads - fasta
 formatThis files contains all
 unique reads that passed the initial denoising step as specified in the
 manuscript.Poc_associates.shhh.fasta454 name fileit contains the name of all reads of the denoised data file that are identical to the representative reads shown in the fasta file. The first column contains the representative sequence's name. The second column contains the names of its representatives separated by commas.Poc_associates.shhh.names454 group fileIt contains the name of the sample each 454 read belongs to. FL: Neocirrhites armatus; AEH: Paracirrhites arcatus; CC: Caracanthus maculatus.Poc_associates.shhh.groups