Abstract

Understanding the dietary habits of lionfish is central to recognize the effects of this exotic species over the reef ecosystem. DNA barcoding is a recent molecular technique that can help identification of the species in gut contents of any predator. In this study, we tested the effectiveness of DNA barcoding to determine the diets of 144 specimens of Pterois volitans (10 to 330 LS) from 8 places of the Mexican Caribbean. In total, 320 samples (217 fish and 111 crustaceans) were analyzed. From them, we obtained 162 sequences. All of them were identified to the finest level with the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD). 27 fish species were identified from the gut, among them Apogon lachneri, Apogon maculates, Astrapogon puncticulatus, Coryphopterus bol, Coryphopterus thrix, Coryphopterus tortugae, Priolepis hipoliti, Gramma loreto, Haemulon flavolineatum, Halichoeres garnoti, Thalassoma bifasciatum, Starksia ocellata, Abudefduf saxatilis, Stegastes partitus, Scarus iseri, Sparisoma aurofrenatum, Sparisoma viride, Cephalopholis cruentata, Enneanectes boehlkei, and Monacanthus tuckeri as well as some evidence of cannibalism. Surprisingly, three of the species identified are new records for Mexican Caribbean; six specimens were Lythypnus and one Starskia. In the case of crustaceans, six species were identified, Thor amboinensis, Euphausia americana, Munida taenia, Penaeopsis serrata, Neogonodactylus oerstedii and Pseudosquilla ciliata, six more only to genera and 12 have no matching species in BOLD, and one polychaete (Phyllodoce sp.) This methodology provides new highlights to study the gut contents with no matter of the digestion grade of them.