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The Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans and P. miles complex) has become widely established along the United States Southeast coast and continues to colonize the Caribbean, yet its biology and ecology is only beginning to be understood. We used stomach contents and stable isotope analyses to determine the diet of lionfish in the warm-temperate hard bottom reef community in the Southeast US Atlantic Ocean. During June to August 2004 and 2006, we collected lionfish with SCUBA from 18 different locations in Onslow Bay, North Carolina, at depths of 30 to 45 m. In 2006, we also conducted visual surveys of small benthic fishes to estimate the abundances of potential prey. Analyses of stomach contents (n = 183) and stable isotopes (n = 115) suggest a generalist carnivorous diet, and prey categories were predominately fish (~99% of total volume) from 16 families. Major differences in the importance of prey occurred between years. Serranidae and Scaridae dominated the diet in 2004, while Haemulidae and Carangidae were important in 2006. Analyses of visual prey surveys did not reveal specialization on particular prey taxa but instead suggest that prey are consumed in relation to their local abundance. Given current theory pertaining to invasive species impacts, the expanding lionfish distribution, and observations that lionfish appear capable of settling to many different habitat types, the overall pattern of generalist piscivory emerging from these data indicates the potential for significant impacts to the invaded community.KEY WORDS: Marine invasion · Rocky reef · Scorpaenidae · Warm temperate · Continental shelf · Piscivory · Diet · Prey Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherMar Ecol Prog Ser 432: [181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191][192][193] 2011 Along the United States Southeast Atlantic coast, and in Bermuda and the Bahamas, red lionfish Pterois volitans and devil firefish P. miles are now established and are continuing to expand their range in the Caribbean , Schofield 2009). These 2 species are nearly morphologically identical and 93% of specimens sampled from the Atlantic as well as North Carolina were P. volitans (Hamner et al. 2007), so hereafter we refer to invasive specimens collectively as lionfish or P. volitans. Native to the subtropical and tropical regions of the South Pacific, Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea, lionfish are venomous predators whose popularity in the aquarium trade may have contributed to their introduction to Atlantic waters (Whitfield et al. 2002, Semmens et al. 2004, Ruiz-Carus et al. 2006. Classified as demersal mesocarnivores together with groupers (Serranidae) and snappers (Lutjanidae) (Caillet et al. 1986), lionfish are believed to be opportunistic predators that consume fish, shrimp, and crabs in their native range (Hiatt & Strasburg 1960, Harmelin-Vivien & Bouchon 1976, Sano et al. 1984. However, until their recent invasion of the Atlantic and Caribbean, their biology and ecology were poorly understood bey...

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Numerous location-based diet studies have been published describing different aspects of invasive lionfish (Pterois volitans and Pterois miles) feeding ecology, but there has been no synthesis of their diet composition and feeding patterns across regional gradients. 8125 lionfish stomachs collected from 10 locations were analyzed to provide a generalized description of their feeding ecology at a regional scale and to compare their diet among locations. Our regional data indicate lionfish in the western Atlantic are opportunistic generalist carnivores that consume at least 167 vertebrate and invertebrate prey species across multiple trophic guilds, and carnivorous fish and shrimp prey that are not managed fishery species and not considered at risk of extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature disproportionately dominate their diet. Correlations between lionfish size and their diet composition indicate lionfish in the western Atlantic