Hitting the moving target: modelling ontogenetic shifts with stable isotopes reveals the importance of isotopic turnover.

Ontogenetic niche shifts are widely prevalent in nature and are important in shaping the structure and dynamics of ecosystems. Stable isotope analysis is a powerful tool to assess these shifts, with δ(15) N providing a measure of trophic level and δ(13) C a measure of energy source. Previous applications of stable isotopes to study ontogenetic niche shifts have not considered the appreciable time lag between diet and consumer tissue associated with isotopic turnover. These time lags introduce significant complexity into field studies of ontogenetic niche shifts. Juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) migrate from freshwater to marine ecosystems and shift their diet from feeding primarily on invertebrates to feeding primarily on fish. This dual ontogenetic habitat and diet shift, in addition to the long time lag associated with isotopic turnover, suggests that there is potential for a disconnect between the prey sources that juvenile salmon are consuming, and the inferred prey sources from stable isotopes. We developed a model that considered ontogenetic niche shifts and time lags associated with isotopic turnover, and compared this 'ontogeny' model to one that considered only isotopic turnover. We used a Bayesian framework to explicitly account for parameter uncertainty. Data showed overwhelming support for the ontogeny model relative to the isotopic turnover model. Estimated variables from best model fits indicate that the ontogeny model predicts a much greater reliance on fish prey than does the stomach content data. Overall, we found that this method of quantifying ontogenetic niche shifts effectively accounted for both isotopic turnover and ontogenetic diet shifts; a finding that could be widely applicable to a variety of systems.

Effects of fasting and nutritional restriction on the isotopic ratios of nitrogen and carbon: a meta-analysis.

Many organisms experience fasting in their life time, and this physiological process has the potential to alter stable isotope values of organisms, and confound interpretation of food web studies. However, previous studies on the effects of fasting and starvation on stable isotopes show disparate results, and have never been quantitatively synthesized. We performed a laboratory experiment and meta-analysis to determine how stable isotopes of δ (15)N and δ (13)C change with fasting, and we tested whether moderators such as taxa and tissue explain residual variation. We collected literature data from a wide variety of taxa and tissues. We surveyed over 2000 papers, and of these, 26 met our selection criteria, resulting in 51 data points for δ (15)N, and 43 data points for δ (13)C. We determine that fasting causes an average increase in the isotopic value of organisms of 0.5‰ for δ (15)N and that the only significant moderator is tissue type. We find that the overall effect size for δ (13)C is not significant, but when the significant moderator of tissue is considered, significant increases in blood and whole organisms are seen with fasting. Our results show that across tissues and taxa, the nutritional status of an organism must be considered when interpreting stable isotope data, as fasting can cause large differences in stable isotope values that would be otherwise attributed to other factors.