Feeding the Future: Diet Data and Ecosystem Perspectives on Fish Food Webs

Dear Colleagues,

Fish food webs underpin aquatic ecosystem functioning, shaping patterns of energy flow, species interactions, and, ultimately, the productivity and resilience of fisheries. Diet data provide a crucial foundation for understanding these dynamics. However, the wide variety of methods used to collect, analyze, and present diet information has often made it difficult to compare results across studies or to integrate them into broader ecosystem assessments. This Special Issue aims to address these challenges by focusing on how fish diet data can be better incorporated into ecosystem-based approaches, with the goal of advancing both scientific understanding and applied fisheries management.

The overall purpose of this Special Issue is to bring together methodological innovations, case studies, and synthesis efforts that highlight the value of diet data in fisheries science, particularly within the framework of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM). The scope spans traditional and newly developed methods, from stomach content and stable isotope analyses to fatty acid tracers, DNA metabarcoding, and automated image-based tools. By showcasing advances in data collection, standardization, analysis, and modelling, this Special Issue seeks to promote more reproducible, comparable, and accessible use of diet datasets across ecosystems and geographical regions. In addition, it will emphasize contributions that demonstrate how diet-based insights can directly support fishery managers and policy-makers in EBFM, conservation planning, and responses to climate change.

This Special Issue is positioned within a growing body of research that recognizes the importance of trophic interactions in shaping marine and freshwater ecosystems. Over the past decade, rapid progress in molecular and biochemical tools for dietary analysis, the establishment of global databases for ecological traits, and the development of new frameworks for ecosystem modelling have all advanced the field. Nonetheless, major challenges remain, particularly around harmonizing diet data across methods and regions, ensuring that datasets are openly available and follow FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles, and demonstrating how such data can inform real-world management and policy decisions. By linking methodological advances with applied ecosystem perspectives, this Special Issue aims to provide a timely contribution that strengthens our collective understanding of fish food webs and their role in ecosystem-based management.

Prof. Letterio Guglielmo
Dr. Pierluigi Carbonara
Dr. Antonia Granata
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• fish food webs
• diet analysis
• DNA metabarcoding
• stable isotopes
• fatty acids
• trophic networks
• ecosystem approach
• FAIR data
• trophic position
• feeding ecology