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The diet of red-throated divers (Gavia stellata) overwintering in the German Bight (North Sea) analysed using molecular diagnostics

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Abstract

In Europe, the German Bight is one of the most important non-breeding areas for protected red-throated divers (Gavia stellata). It is unclear what attracts the birds to this area, especially as the food composition of seabirds outside the breeding season is notoriously difficult to study. To obtain information on prey species composition of red-throated divers in this area, faecal samples from 34 birds caught alive were analysed using DNA metabarcoding. Prey DNA was detected in 85% of the samples with a mean number of 4.2 ± 0.7 taxa per sample (n = 29). Altogether, we found a broad prey spectrum with 19 fish taxa from 13 families dominated by five groups: clupeids, mackerel, gadoids, flatfish and sand lances with clupeids being the most frequently detected prey. Our results indicate that red-throated divers are generalist opportunistic feeders in the German Bight, but pelagic schooling fish that aggregate at frontal zones and have a high energetic value might be favoured. Atlantic mackerel appears to be a more important prey for red-throated divers in this area than previously thought. The precision achievable using metabarcoding has revealed a number of prey species that are consumed by red-throated divers in the German Bight, which helps to explain the selection of this area by divers in winter and spring.

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Acknowledgements

The DIVER project was supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag (funding ID 0325747 A/B). The library preparation, sequencing steps and bioinformatics training were supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Biomolecular Analysis Facility at the University of Sheffield (NBAF-S) and funded by the NERC, UK (funding ID NBAF989). Thomas Grünkorn and Jorg Welcker completed our field team and provided valuable support. Thomas Grünkorn also contributed by ringing of the captured red-throated divers. Many thanks to Silke Waap for providing important advice during primer development, to Isa-Rita Russo for valuable help and advice in the lab and to the Molecular Ecology lab at Cardiff University for support and discussion. Sören Zenner (OS-Energy) allowed flexible organisation and provision of ships during the field seasons, and we thank the ship captains and crews of the MS Madog and MS Arctic Hunter for their reliability and support during fieldwork. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their valuable comments which helped to improve the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Ramūnas Žydelis

    Present address: Ornitela UAB, 03228, Vilnius, Lithuania

  2. Stefan Heinänen

    Present address: Novia University of Applied Sciences, Raseborgsvägen 9, 10600, Ekenäs, Finland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal Ecology and Systematics, Justus Liebig University Giessen, 35392, Giessen, Germany

    Birgit Kleinschmidt & Petra Quillfeldt

  2. BioConsult SH, 25813, Husum, Germany

    Birgit Kleinschmidt, Claudia Burger, Monika Dorsch & Georg Nehls

  3. DHI, 2970, Hørsholm, Denmark

    Stefan Heinänen & Ramūnas Žydelis

  4. Marine Research Institute, Klaipėda University, 92294, Klaipėda, Lithuania

    Julius Morkūnas

  5. Cardiff School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Sir Martin Evans Building, Cardiff, CF10 3 AX, UK

    Rosemary J. Moorhouse-Gann & William O. C. Symondson

  6. NERC Biomolecular Analysis Facility, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK

    Helen Hipperson

Authors
  1. Birgit Kleinschmidt
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  2. Claudia Burger
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  3. Monika Dorsch
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  4. Georg Nehls
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  5. Stefan Heinänen
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  6. Julius Morkūnas
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  7. Ramūnas Žydelis
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  8. Rosemary J. Moorhouse-Gann
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  9. Helen Hipperson
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  10. William O. C. Symondson
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  11. Petra Quillfeldt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Birgit Kleinschmidt.

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The authors explicitly declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

We herewith assure that the ethical rules as well as the legal requirements for the fieldwork have been met. All filed work (animal capture, sampling and tagging) was conducted under appropriate ethics and approvals; approved by BfN (Federal agency for Nature Conservation, Germany, 05.08.2014) and Ministry of Environment and Food Denmark (Danish—Veterinary and Food Administration 18.12.2014—2014-15-0201-00239).

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 5.

Table 5 Best blast results for each of the 21 detected taxa and corresponding accession number, the identity with the blast reference sequence, the sequence length and the bitscore from data of both sampling years (2015 and 2016) combined
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Kleinschmidt, B., Burger, C., Dorsch, M. et al. The diet of red-throated divers (Gavia stellata) overwintering in the German Bight (North Sea) analysed using molecular diagnostics. Mar Biol 166, 77 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-019-3523-3

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