Fatty acid composition at the base of aquatic food webs is influenced by habitat type and watershed land use.

ABSTRACT: Spatial variation in food resources strongly influences many aspects of aquatic consumer ecology. Although large-scale controls over spatial variation in many aspects of food resources are well known, others have received little study. Here we investigated variation in the fatty acid (FA) composition of seston and primary consumers within (i.e., among habitats) and among tributary systems of Lake Michigan, USA. FA composition of food is important because all metazoans require certain FAs for proper growth and development that cannot be produced de novo, including many polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). Here we sampled three habitat types (river, rivermouth and nearshore zone) in 11 tributaries of Lake Michigan to assess the amount of FA in seston and primary consumers of seston. We hypot

SUBMITTER: Larson JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3734252 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature