variability in isotope discrimination factors in coral reef fishes implications for diet and food web reconstruction珊瑚礁鱼类变化同位素歧视因素对饮食和食物网重建的影响.pdfVIP

Variability in Isotope Discrimination Factors in Coral Reef Fishes: Implications for Diet and Food Web Reconstruction 1,2 ¤ 1,2 3 Alex S. J. Wyatt * , Anya M. Waite , Stuart Humphries 1The Oceans Institute, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia, 2 School of Environmental Systems Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia, 3 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Hull, Kingston-upon-Hull, United Kingdom Abstract Interpretation of stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen (d13C and d15N) is generally based on the assumption that with each trophic level there is a constant enrichment in the heavier isotope, leading to diet-tissue discrimination factors of 3.4% for 15N (DN) and ,0.5% for 13C (DC). Diet-tissue discrimination factors determined from paired tissue and gut samples taken from 152 individuals from 26 fish species at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia demonstrate a large amount of variability around constant values. While caution is necessary in using gut contents to represent diet due to the potential for high temporal variability, there were significant effects of trophic position and season that may also lead to variability in DN under natural conditions. Nitrogen enrichment increased significantly at higher trophic levels (higher tissue d15N), with significantly higher DN in carnivorous species. Changes in diet led to significant changes in DN, but not tissue d15N, between seasons for several species: Acanthurus triostegus, Chromis viridis, Parupeneus signatus and Pomacentrus moluccensis. These results confirm that the use of meta-analysis averages for DN is likely to be inappropriate for accurately determini