1 The significance of cephalopod beaks in 2 marine ecology studies: Can we use beaks 3 for DNA analyses and mercury 4 contamination assessment? 5 José Carlos Xavier1,2,*, Sónia Ferreira3, Sílvia Tavares4, Nuno Santos3, Cláudia 6 Leopoldina Mieiro4,6, Phil Trathan2, Sílvia Lourenço1, Filipe Martinho4, Dirk Steinke5, 7 José Seco6,7, Eduarda Pereira6, Miguel Pardal4 & Yves Cherel8 8 1 - MARE – Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Departamento das Ciências da Vida, 9 Universidade de Coimbra, 3001-401 Coimbra, Portugal 10 2 - British Antarctic Survey, NERC, High Cross, Madingley Road, CB3 0ET, Cambridge, UK 11 3 - Department of Health and Education, Institute of Education and Citizenship 3770-033 12 Mamarrosa, Portugal 13 4 - Centre for Functional Ecology - CFE, Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, 14 Calçada Martim de Freitas, 3000-456 Coimbra, Portugal 15 5 – Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON, 16 N1G2W1, Canada 17 6 – CESAM and Department of Chemistry, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal 18 7 – School of Biology, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK 19 8 – Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, UMR 7372 du CNRS-Université de La Rochelle, 20 79360 Villiers-en-Bois, France 21 * Corresponding author (
[email protected]) 22 Keywords: Squid beaks, toxicology, DNA, mercury levels 1 23 ABSTRACT 24 Cephalopod beaks found in the diet of predators have been a major source of 25 scientific information. In this study, we evaluated the usefulness of DNA and 26 contaminants analysis (total mercury- T-Hg) in cephalopod beaks in order to assess their 27 applicability as tools in marine ecology studies.