Amino acid nitrogen and carbon isotope data: Potential and implications for ecological studies.

ABSTRACT: Explaining food web dynamics, stability, and functioning depend substantially on understanding of feeding relations within a community. Bulk stable isotope ratios (SIRs) in natural abundance are well-established tools to express direct and indirect feeding relations as continuous variables across time and space. Along with bulk SIRs, the SIRs of individual amino acids (AAs) are now emerging as a promising and complementary method to characterize the flow and transformation of resources across a diversity of organisms, from microbial domains to macroscopic consumers. This significant AA-SIR capacity is based on empirical evidence that a consumer's SIR, specific to an individual AA, reflects its diet SIR coupled with a certain degree of isotopic differences between the consumer and its diet.

SUBMITTER: Yun HY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9163675 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature