Dataset Information

Locations of marine animals revealed by carbon isotopes.

ABSTRACT: Knowing the distribution of marine animals is central to understanding climatic and other environmental influences on population ecology. This information has proven difficult to gain through capture-based methods biased by capture location. Here we show that marine location can be inferred from animal tissues. As the carbon isotope composition of animal tissues varies with sea surface temperature, marine location can be identified by matching time series of carbon isotopes measured in tissues to sea surface temperature records. Applying this technique to populations of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) produces isotopically-derived maps of oceanic feeding grounds, consistent with the current understanding of salmon migrations, that additionally reveal geographic segregation in feeding grounds between individual philopatric populations and age-classes. Carbon isotope ratios can be used to identify the location of open ocean feeding grounds for any pelagic animals for which tissue archives and matching records of sea surface temperature are available.

SUBMITTER: MacKenzie KM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3216509 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Locations of marine animals revealed by carbon isotopes.

MacKenzie Kirsteen M KM Palmer Martin R MR Moore Andy A Ibbotson Anton T AT Beaumont William R C WR Poulter David J S DJ Trueman Clive N CN

Scientific reports 20110623

Knowing the distribution of marine animals is central to understanding climatic and other environmental influences on population ecology. This information has proven difficult to gain through capture-based methods biased by capture location. Here we show that marine location can be inferred from animal tissues. As the carbon isotope composition of animal tissues varies with sea surface temperature, marine location can be identified by matching time series of carbon isotopes measured in tissues t ...[more]

PMID: 22355540

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Project description:The Arctic is undergoing unprecedented environmental change. Rapid warming, decline in sea ice extent, increase in riverine input, ocean acidification and changes in primary productivity are creating a crucible for multiple concurrent environmental stressors, with unknown consequences for the entire arctic ecosystem. Here, we synthesized 30 years of data on the stable carbon isotope (δ13 C) signatures in dissolved inorganic carbon (δ13 C-DIC; 1977-2014), marine and riverine particulate organic carbon (δ13 C-POC; 1986-2013) and tissues of marine mammals in the Arctic. δ13 C values in consumers can change as a result of environmentally driven variation in the δ13 C values at the base of the food web or alteration in the trophic structure, thus providing a method to assess the sensitivity of food webs to environmental change. Our synthesis reveals a spatially heterogeneous and temporally evolving δ13 C baseline, with spatial gradients in the δ13 C-POC values between arctic shelves and arctic basins likely driven by differences in productivity and riverine and coastal influence. We report a decline in δ13 C-DIC values (-0.011‰ per year) in the Arctic, reflecting increasing anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2 ) in the Arctic Ocean (i.e. Suess effect), which is larger than predicted. The larger decline in δ13 C-POC values and δ13 C in arctic marine mammals reflects the anthropogenic CO2 signal as well as the influence of a changing arctic environment. Combining the influence of changing sea ice conditions and isotopic fractionation by phytoplankton, we explain the decadal decline in δ13 C-POC values in the Arctic Ocean and partially explain the δ13 C values in marine mammals with consideration of time-varying integration of δ13 C values. The response of the arctic ecosystem to ongoing environmental change is stronger than we would predict theoretically, which has tremendous implications for the study of food webs in the rapidly changing Arctic Ocean.

Dataset Information

Locations of marine animals revealed by carbon isotopes.

Publications

Locations of marine animals revealed by carbon isotopes.

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