Despite the central importance of feeding relationships in understanding food web dynamics and energy transfer, little is known about the feeding biology of the extant species of elasmobranchs. Additionally, due to recent global declines in traditional teleostean fish stocks, elasmobranch fisheries are expanding in size and importance. Fisheries targeting elasmobranchs can therefore cause severe and often rapid depletion of stocks, endangering their resource and ecological value over broad regions.
Rays are upper-level carnivores which prey primarily on benthic invertebrates and fishes.
In Almejas Bay, rays are abundant and most likely occupy elevated trophic positions. Therefore, their removal may have profound and unpredictable cascading effects on the benthic community structure. The infaunal and epifaunal benthic invertebrate community will be characterized to provide baseline information against which future changes can be assessed and to determine electivity of rays for the suite of available prey items. Trophic ecology will be determined based upon the dietary composition of prey items utilized by each species and their proposed role in the Almejas Bay food web. This study addresses the need for quantitative information on the feeding ecology of rays in Baja California.