BUSCADOR RECOLECTA

Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC

oai:digital.csic.es:10261/284679

30 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables.-- This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), The use of cephalopod beaks in ecological and population dynamics studies has allowed major advances of our knowledge on the role of cephalopods in marine ecosystems in the last 60 years. Since the 1960’s, with the pioneering research by Malcolm Clarke and colleagues, cephalopod beaks (also named jaws or mandibles) have been described to species level and their measurements have been shown to be related to cephalopod body size and mass, which permitted important information to be obtained on numerous biological and ecological aspects of cephalopods in marine ecosystems. In the last decade, a range of new techniques has been applied to cephalopod beaks, permitting new kinds of insight into cephalopod biology and ecology. The workshop on cephalopod beaks of the Cephalopod International Advisory Council Conference (Sesimbra, Portugal) in 2022 aimed to review the most recent scientific developments in this field and to identify future challenges, particularly in relation to taxonomy, age, growth, chemical composition (i.e., DNA, proteomics, stable isotopes, trace elements) and physical (i.e., structural) analyses. In terms of taxonomy, new techniques (e.g., 3D geometric morphometrics) for identifying cephalopods from their beaks are being developed with promising results, although the need for experts and reference collections of cephalopod beaks will continue. The use of beak microstructure for age and growth studies has been validated. Stable isotope analyses on beaks have proven to be an excellent technique to get valuable information on the ecology of cephalopods (namely habitat and trophic position). Trace element analyses is also possible using beaks, where concentrations are significantly lower than in other tissues (e.g., muscle, digestive gland, gills). Extracting DNA from beaks was only possible in one study so far. Protein analyses can also be made using cephalopod beaks. Future challenges in research using cephalopod beaks are also discussed, This study benefited from the strategic program of the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE), financed by the FCT (UIDB/704292/2020). This project was also supported through funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101065960 granted to AG. JQ is supported by FCT PhD scholarship co-financed by FSE (SFRH/BD/144320/2019). CP-R would like to thank the support of the project OCTOMICS (AGL 201789475-C2-1-R) and the EU-FEDER funds. ÁG also thank the support of the project ECOSUMA (PID 2019-110088RB-I00). The IUF (Institut Universitaire de France) is acknowledged for its support to PB as a senior member. VD was supported by NSF REU Site EAR-1062692, as well as through a Natural History Research Experiences summer internship at the Smithsonian Institution. AG-M was supported by a PhD-fellowship (PIFULPGC-2017-CIENCIAS-2) from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Participation of ER in the workshop on cephalopod beaks and studies of cephalopods in Reunion Island was supported by the Project DECAPOT funded by EU FEDER and la Région Réunion. AS-M was supported by a PhD-fellowship (ref. PRE 2021-099558) associated to the project BITER (PID 2020-114732RB-C31, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spanish Government). LS was supported by a Human Frontier Science Program Long-term fellowship (LT000476/2021-L). EV would like to thank support from the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq # 316391/2021-2), With the institutional support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S), Peer reviewed