Publication Details |
| Category | Text Publication |
| Reference Category | Journals |
| DOI | 10.1007/s00027-014-0388-x |
| Document | Shareable Link |
| Title (Primary) | High variability in carbon and nitrogen isotopic discrimination of tropical freshwater invertebrates |
| Author | de Carvalho, A.P.C.; Gücker, B.; Brauns, M.; Boëchat, I.G. |
| Journal | Aquatic Sciences |
| Year | 2015 |
| Department | FLOEK |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Page From | 307 |
| Page To | 314 |
| Language | englisch |
| Keywords | Carbon and nitrogen fractionation; Stable isotopes; Riverine food webs |
| UFZ wide themes | RU2; |
| Abstract | Stable isotope techniques are widely applied in aquatic food web research to infer trophic position or to estimate the relative contributions of different dietary resources. The accurate consideration of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) discrimination in organisms is a critical prerequisite for such studies. Isotopic discrimination of invertebrates may differ systematically between temperate and tropical freshwater environments, but there are little data available on discrimination factors of tropical invertebrates. Here, we analyzed the C (Δ13C) and N discrimination (Δ15N) of eight taxa of benthic freshwater invertebrates from a Southeastern Brazilian tropical catchment, six predator and two shredder species. Predators showed a high variability in Δ13C (−1.5 to 1.3; min–max), but shredders exhibited a lower variability and had negative Δ13C values (−2.1 to −1.8). Values of Δ15N were also highly variable among both predators and shredders, but shredders had negative and lower values (−0.9 to −0.1) than predators (0.0 to 9.1). Tissue turnover rates were equal to or higher than 0.02 d−1 for all invertebrates, suggesting that experiment durations of 50 days may be sufficient for future isotopic discrimination experiments with tropical freshwater invertebrates. Our results suggest that Δ13C enrichment, and to a minor degree also Δ15N enrichment, may not always occur in tropical freshwater invertebrates. |
| Persistent UFZ Identifier | https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=15561 |
| de Carvalho, A.P.C., Gücker, B., Brauns, M., Boëchat, I.G. (2015): High variability in carbon and nitrogen isotopic discrimination of tropical freshwater invertebrates Aquat. Sci. 77 (2), 307 - 314 |
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