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International efforts to assess the status of marine ecosystems have been hampered by insufficient observations of food web interactions across many species, their various life stages, and geographic ranges. Hence, we collated data from multiple databases of fish stomach contents from samples taken across the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans containing 944,129 stomach samples from larvae to adults, with 14,196 unique interactions between 227 predator species and 2158 prey taxa. We use these data to develop a data-driven, reproducible approach to classifying broad functional feeding guilds and then apply these to fish survey data from the Northeast Atlantic shelf seas to reveal spatial and temporal changes in ecosystem structure and functioning. In doing so, we construct predator-prey body size scaling models to predict the biomass of prey functional groups, e.g., zooplankton, benthos, and fish, for different predator species. These predictions provide empirical estimates of species- and size-specific feeding traits of fish, such as predator-prey mass ratios, individual prey mass, and the biomass contribution of different prey to predator diets. The functional groupings and feeding traits provided here help to further resolve our understanding of interactions within marine food webs and support the use of trait-based indicators in biodiversity assessments. The data used and predictions generated in this study are published on the Cefas Data Hub at: https://doi.org/10.14466/CefasDataHub.149 (Thompson et al., 2024). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that investigated the diet of Atlantic white-sided dolphins in the Northeast Atlantic. The study involved 20 digestive tracts of Atlantic white-sided dolphins stranded and caught in Irish waters, identified and estimated size and weight of eaten prey using back calculation regression equations, and revealed that mesopelagic prey and the blue whiting group made up the juvenile dolphins' diet while "Trisopterus" spp. dominated the adult diet followed by blue whiting.

seal carcasses between 1997 and 2008 from different areas along the Greek coast. This sample included nine animals that had been deliberately killed and five accidental deaths due to fisheries interactions. Stomachs from monk seals of both sexes, including adults and subadults, were analysed. A total of 530 prey items from at least 71 prey species was identified, with approximately 74% of prey identified at least to genus, while 2.8% could be identified only to class level (i.e., fish or cephalopods). We found 266 cephalopods (50%), 253 fish (48%), a few non-cephalopod molluscs (1.5%), and two crustaceans (0.4%). Faecal samples were also collected but contained no identifiable prey remains. Octopuses were the most important prey in terms of numbers eaten and contribution to reconstructed prey biomass. The common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) (33.9% of prey by number) was around three times as numerous in the diet as the lesser octopus (Eledone cirrhosa) (11.1%). Fish of the families Sparidae (28.1%) and, to a lesser extent, Scorpaenidae (2.3%), Congridae (2.5%), and Atherinidae (2.5%) were also frequent in the stomachs. Many of the prey species recorded are of commercial fishery importance. Exploratory multivariate analysis (redundancy analysis [RDA]) indicated weakly significant seasonal, spatial, and interannual variation in diet and also suggested a relationship between diet composition and cause of death. No trends in diet related to sex or age class were identified. Sparids occurred more frequently in animals that had been deliberately killed than those that had died due to other causes, highlighting the interactions taking place between monk seals and fishing activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]