| Summary: | International audience Cephalopods play an importantrole in the Antarctic ecosystem, beingconsumed by a wide range of predatorssuch as whales, fish, seals, albatrosses andpenguins. To understand predator-preyinteractions between top predators andcephalopods, effort has been put into thedevelopment of methods to determine theidentity and size of world cephalopodsusing beaks since the 1950s (Clarke 1962a,b; Clarke 1966; Clarke 1977; Clarke 1980;Clarke 1986; Kubodera & Furuhashi 1987;Fiscus 1991; Smale et al. 1993; Xavier etal. 2007). The most used beak guideworldwide (Clarke 1986) is now out ofprint and is in need of urgent revision withadditional material (Santos et al. 2001).Also, several new cephalopod species forthe Southern Ocean have been recentlydescribed taxonomically, whose beaks needto be described and/or included in a guide(e.g. Collins & Henriques 2000; Lipinski2001; Allcock & Piertney 2002).New efforts in the SouthernHemisphere allowed a new cephalopodbeak guide to be produced (Lu &Ickeringill 2002), covering 75 species ofcephalopods in Australian waters. Alsonew internet technology has been used tocreate a website to aid beak identification(http://research.kahaku.go.jp/zoology/Beak-E/index.htm) for Japanese waters. However, a cephalopod beak guide for theentire Southern Ocean is nonexistent andurgently needed.Here, we specifically aim to describethe main cephalopod beaks from speciesfound in the diet of predators from theSouthern Ocean (defined as south of theSubtropical Front) and adjacent watersin order to assist scientists and studentsinterested in identifying cephalopods bythe means of their beaks. Special attentionwas paid to providing photographs oftypical beaks found in the diets of adultsand juveniles when relevant. As a new toolapplied to marine ecology, 3-D computerimages of the most important lower beaksare also provided, where it is possible torotate each beak 360 degrees and zoom inand out of particular key features of beaksin three dimensions. In addition, a reviewof ...
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