Predator specialization has often been considered an evolutionary ‘dead-end’ due to the constraints associated with the evolution of morphological and functional optimizations throughout the organism. However, in some predators, these changes are localized in separate structures dedicated to prey capture. One of the most extreme cases of this modularity can be observed in siphonophores, a clade of pelagic colonial cnidarians that use tentilla (tentacle side branches armed with nematocysts) exclu...
Show moreWe extracted categorical diet data for different siphonophore species from published sources, including seminal papers [@biggs1977field;@purcell1981dietary;@purcell1984functions;@Mackie:1987uy;@pugh1988two;@purcell1984predation;@andersen1981redescription], and ROV observation data [@choy2017deep;@hissmann2005situ] with the assistance of Elizabeth Hetherington and C. Anela Choy (data available in Dryad repository). In order to detect coarse-level patterns in feeding habits, the data were merged into feeding guilds. For more details on how the diet data was curated and summarized into guilds, please see Supplementary Methods.
We also extracted copepod prey length data from [@purcell1984functions]. To calculate specific prey selectivities, we extracted quantitative diet and zooplankton composition data from [@purcell1981dietary], matched each diet assessment to each prey field quantification by site, calculated Ivlev’s electivity indices [@jacobs1974quantitative], and averaged those by species (data available in Dryad repository).
Published May 07, 2021 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p2ngf1vp2
Haddock, S. H., Damian-Serrano, A., Dunn, C. W. (2023) Feeding ecology of siphonophores from multiple year fieldwork expeditions. Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). (Version 1) Version Date 2023-09-01 [if applicable, indicate subset used]. http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset/907548 [access date]
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