gutcontent
Gutcontent, or gut contents, denotes the material contained within the gastrointestinal tract of an organism at a given moment, including ingested food, partially digested material, and associated fluids and micro-organisms. In research contexts, gut-content analysis seeks to identify what an animal has recently eaten to infer diet and feeding behavior.
Applications include ecological studies of predator–prey relationships, assessments of foraging strategies, and paleontological or archaeological reconstructions
Methods commonly combine morphological inspection of macroscopic remains with molecular techniques such as DNA metabarcoding to
Special considerations: gut contents reflect a short window of recent feeding and may not represent typical
Compared with fecal analysis, gut-content study provides access to less-digested material but may be more invasive