Feeding habits of European hake (Merluccius merluccius) in the central Mediterranean Sea

European hake (Merluccius merluccius) is an important predator of deeper shel f-upper slope Mediterranean communities. It is a nectobenthic species distributed over a wide depth range (20-1000 m) throughout the Mediterranean Sea and the north east At l ant ic reg ion ( Fi sher et al ., 1987) . Notwithstanding the ecological and economic importance (Oliver and Massut í , 1995) of hake in the Mediterranean, many aspects of its biology (e.g., recruitment and reproduction), due t o multiple spawning (Sarano, 1986) and the current state of exploitation, are poorly understood (Arneri and Morales-Nin, 2000). Re ent studies on hake feeding habits in the Mediterranean (Papacostantinou and Caragitsou, 1987; Bouaziz et al., 1990; Oliver and Massutí, 1995) have focused on 0-3 age groups using data from trawl catches (Recasens et al., 1998; Colloca et al., 2000) . For this reason, trophic habits of older individuals (Bozzano et al ., 1997) and possible ont ogenesis-related diet changes are almost unknown. Therefore, in this study we combined samples from trawl and gillnet fisheries collected in the same fishing ground (Colloca et al., 2000) to address these issues.