IsoWeb: a bayesian isotope mixing model for diet analysis of the whole food web.

ABSTRACT: Quantitative description of food webs provides fundamental information for the understanding of population, community, and ecosystem dynamics. Recently, stable isotope mixing models have been widely used to quantify dietary proportions of different food resources to a focal consumer. Here we propose a novel mixing model (IsoWeb) that estimates diet proportions of all consumers in a food web based on stable isotope information. IsoWeb requires a topological description of a food web, and stable isotope signatures of all consumers and resources in the web. A merit of IsoWeb is that it takes into account variation in trophic enrichment factors among different consumer-resource links. Sensitivity analysis using realistic hypothetical food webs suggests that IsoWeb is applicable to a wide varie

SUBMITTER: Kadoya T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3407136 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature