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

Ecology and Evolution

Eric Hertz¹  Marc Trudel¹  Marlin K. Cox² 

[1] Department of Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada;University of Alaska Southeast, Juneau, Alaska

关键词: Chinook Salmon;    diet;    food webs;    Oncorhynchus tshawytscha;    stable isotopes;    starvation;    trophic;   

DOI  :  10.1002/ece3.1738

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

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 δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C 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 δ¹⁵N, and 43 data points for δ¹³C. We determine that fasting causes an average increase in the isotopic value of organisms of 0.5‰ for δ¹⁵N and that the only significant moderator is tissue type. We find that the overall effect size for δ¹³C 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.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.