Data on the diets of Salish Sea harbour seals from DNA metabarcoding

Marine trophic ecology data are in high demand as natural resource agencies increasingly adopt ecosystem-based management strategies that account for complex species interactions. Harbour seal ( Phoca vitulina ) diet data are of particular interest because the species is an abundant predator in the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific data 2022-03, Vol.9 (1), p.68-68, Article 68
Main Authors: Thomas, Austen C., Deagle, Bruce, Nordstrom, Chad, Majewski, Sheena, Nelson, Benjamin W., Acevedo-Gutiérrez, Alejandro, Jeffries, Steven, Moore, Jed, Louden, Amelia, Allegue, Hassen, Pearson, Scott, Schmidt, Michael, Trites, Andrew W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/601/18
704/158/1144
704/158/2452
704/829/826
Animals
Data Descriptor
Deoxyribonucleic acid
Diet
DNA
DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic
Ecosystem
Ecosystem management
Ecosystems
Genetic testing
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Nucleotide sequence
Phoca
Phoca vitulina
Prey
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Species
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Summary:Marine trophic ecology data are in high demand as natural resource agencies increasingly adopt ecosystem-based management strategies that account for complex species interactions. Harbour seal ( Phoca vitulina ) diet data are of particular interest because the species is an abundant predator in the northeast Pacific Ocean and Salish Sea ecosystem that consumes Pacific salmon ( Oncorhynchus spp .). A multi-agency effort was therefore undertaken to produce harbour seal diet data on an ecosystem scale using, 1) a standardized set of scat collection and analysis methods, and 2) a newly developed DNA metabarcoding diet analysis technique designed to identify prey species and quantify their relative proportions in seal diets. The DNA-based dataset described herein contains records from 4,625 harbour seal scats representing 52 haulout sites, 7 years, 12 calendar months, and a total of 11,641 prey identifications. Prey morphological hard parts analyses were conducted alongside, resulting in corresponding hard parts data for 92% of the scat DNA samples. A custom-built prey DNA sequence database containing 201 species (192 fishes, 9 cephalopods) is also provided. Measurement(s) diet Technology Type(s) DNA metabarcoding diet analysis Sample Characteristic - Organism Phoca vitulina Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19077809
ISSN:2052-4463
2052-4463
DOI:10.1038/s41597-022-01152-5