Squalus acanthias, Linnaeus, 1758

Falke, Landon P., Smith, Brian E., Rowe, Stacy, Peters, Rebecca J. & Sheehan, Timothy F., 2025, Trophic ecology of groundfishes in nearshore areas of the Gulf of Maine, Journal of Fish Biology 106 (4), pp. 1095-1111 : 1104

3.3.5 | S. acanthias

Stomach contents of S. acanthias consisted mostly of alosines and other clupeids, which combined for over half of S. acanthias diet by mean proportional mass (Figure 3; Table S3). Cephalopods, unclassified teleosts, S. scombrus , C. maculatus , and hyperiid amphipods were the next largest identified contributors in S. acanthias diets. S. acanthias had the highest rate of empty stomachs (35.33%) of the six focal predators (Table S3). None of the CCA terms explained more variation in S. acanthias diet composition than expected by random chance (n = 16 tows with ≥ 4 stomach samples), and there were no correlations between tow-level proportional masses of prey and the explanatory variables. Seasonal differences in S. acanthias diets were not evaluated due to their low sample size in spring (Figure S12).