TrophicCS: Spatialized trophic data of the Celtic Sea continental shelf food web

Understanding the dynamics of species interactions for food (prey-predator, competition for resources) and the functioning of trophic networks (dependence on trophic pathways, food chain flows, etc.) has become a thriving ecological research field in recent decades. This empirical knowledge is then used to develop population and ecosystem modelling approaches to support ecosystem-based management. The TrophicCS data set offers spatialized trophic information on a large spatial scale (the entire Celtic Sea continental shelf and upper slope) for a wide range of species. It combines ingested prey (gut content analysis) and a more integrated indicator of food sources (stable isotope analysis). A total of 1337 samples of large epifaunal invertebrates (bivalve mollusks and decapod crustaceans), zooplankton, fish and cephalopods, corresponding to 114 species, were collected and analyzed for stable isotope analysis of their carbon and nitrogen content. Sample size varied between taxa (from 1 to 52), with an average of 11.72 individuals sampled per species, and water depths ranged from 57 to 516 m. The gut contents of 1026 fish belonging to ten commercially important species: black anglerfish (Lophius budegassa), white anglerfish (Lophius piscatorius), blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou), cod (Gadus morhua), haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus), hake (Merluccius merluccius), megrim (Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis), plaice (Pleuronectes platessa), sole (Solea solea) and whiting (Merlangius merlangus) were analyzed. The stomach content data set contains the occurrence of prey in stomach, identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible. To consider potential ontogenetic diet changes, a large size range was sampled. The TrophicCS data set was used to improve understanding of trophic relationships and ecosystem functioning in the Celtic Sea. When you use the data in your publication, we request that you cite this data paper. If you use the present data set (TrophicCS) for the majority of the data analyzed in your study, you may wish to consider inviting at least one author of the core team of this data paper to become a collaborator /coauthor of your paper.

Disciplines

Environment

Keywords

Gut content analysis, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, trophic niche, diet matrix, trophic network structure, ecosystem scale, Celtic Sea continental shelf, November 2014-2016

Location

51.957073N, 43.148224S, -0.791016E, -11.469727W

Devices

Metadata are describe in the data paper : https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3708 

Format and storage mode: CSV File

Header information: The first row of all files contains variable names

Alphanumeric attributes: Mixed

Special characters/fields: Missing fields are coded as NA

Stomach_content_TrophicCS.csv :  2188 observations of 23 variables (Size : 441Ko)              

Stable_isotope_TrophicCS.csv : 1337 observations of 14 variables (Size: 145 Ko)

 

Data

FileSizeFormatProcessingAccess
Stable_isotope_TrophicCS.csv
124 KoCSVQuality controlled data
Stomach_content_TrophicCS.csv
381 KoCSVQuality controlled data
How to cite
Robert Marianne, Pawlowski Lionel, Kopp Dorothee (2022). TrophicCS: Spatialized trophic data of the Celtic Sea continental shelf food web. SEANOE. https://doi.org/10.17882/81149

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