Understanding dietary habits is one of the most important factors in studying food webs and other ecological processes. Here we designed universal primers to amplify portions of the 18S and 28S rDNA sequences to examine gut contents using PCR techniques. The gut contents of sailfin sandfish (Arctoscopus japonicus) and pacific squid (Todarodes pacificus) were examined. In total, 11 families of prey were identified with 18S and 28S rDNA using the universal primers. The DNA sequence data indicated thatthe primer sets successfully amplified a wide spectrum of species and represented gut contents in a relatively convenient way. We found that information in the NCBI database was not yet sufficient to discriminate the species we isolated. In addition, technology for the separation of heterogeneous PCR products and better resolution and quantification protocols would help increase data accuracy.
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