Information about the dietary composition of species is crucial to understand their position and role in the food web. Stomach content analysis (SCA) and stable isotope analysis (SIA) are commonly used to study marine trophic relationships. SCA can provide high taxonomic resolution but requires taxonomic expertise and frequently underestimates digestible taxa. SIA provides a time-integrated view of the dietary sources but often lacks in taxonomic resolution. The use of molecular approaches such as DNA-metabarcoding may alleviate these problems. Here, we used DNA-metabarcoding with universal primers for cytochrome c oxidase I (COI), to study the diet composition of the Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) from the Barents Sea, a keystone species in the Arctic region with large socio-economic importance. Across locations, jellyfish and chaetognaths were the most important components in the diet of P. borealis, jointly accounting for 40-60% of the total read abundance. This dietary importance of gelatinous zooplankton contrasts sharply with published results based on SCA. At the same time, diet composition differed between fjord and shelf locations, pointing to different food webs supporting P. borealis in these two systems. Our study underscores the potential of molecular approaches to provide important new insights into the diet of marine invertebrates that are difficult or impossible to obtain with traditional methods, and calls for a revision of the role of gelatinous zooplankton in the diet of the key Arctic species P. borealis, and in extension, Arctic food webs.

This dataset contains all the information on the Pandalus borealis specimens analysed for the study on DNA-metabarcoding of P.borealis stomach content(Manuscript title: DNA-metabarcoding reveals the importance of gelatinous zooplankton in the diet of Pandalus borealis, a keystone species in the Arctic). The dataset "Pandalus_borealis_specimen_information" contains the metadata on the individuals studied, and "Pandalus_borealis_prey_metabarcoding_finaldataset" is the final output of the DNA-metabarcoding that was used to assess the diet of P. borealis. 

Sampling of specimen took place in Kvænangenfjord (Troms-Region) and around Svalbard (northern Barents Sea) on the Research Vessel Helmer Hanssen (UiT the Arctic University of Norway).

The file "Pandalus_borealis_prey_metabarcoding_finaldataset.csv contain" contains blank entries (blank values changes to NA).