No guts, no glory: Gut content metabarcoding unveils the diet of a flower‐associated coastal sage scrub predator

Abstract

AbstractInvertebrate generalist predators are ubiquitous and play a major role in food‐web dynamics. Molecular gut content analysis (MGCA) has become a popular means to assess prey ranges and specificity of cryptic arthropods in the absence of direct observation. While this approach has been widely used to study predation on economically important taxa (i.e., pests) in agroecosystems, it is less frequently used to study the broader trophic interactions involving generalist predators in natural communities such as the diverse and threatened coastal sage scrub communities of Southern California. Here, we employ DNA metabarcoding‐based MGCA and survey the taxonomically and ecologically diverse prey range of Phymata pacifica Evans, a generalist flower‐associated ambush bug (Hemiptera: Reduviidae). We detected predation on a wide array of taxa including beneficial pollinators, potential pests, and other predatory arthropods. The success of this study demonstrates the utility of MGCA in natural ecosystems and can serve as a model for future diet investigations into other cryptic and underrepresented communities.