Potential for Less Invasive Inference of Resource Use: Covariation in Stable Isotope Composition between Females and Their Eggs in Bluegill

Stable isotope analysis is frequently used to examine resource use in wild populations, but it often involves invasive or lethal methods of collecting tissue samples. The development of less invasive or nonlethal sampling techniques will expand the possible uses of stable isotopes. We examined wheth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (1900) 2015-03, Vol.144 (2), p.283-291
Main Authors: Colborne, Scott F, Hain, Timothy J. A, Longstaffe, Fred J, Neff, Bryan D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
carbon
crossing
diet
ecology
females
fish eggs
foraging
Lepomis macrochirus
liver
muscles
nitrogen
stable isotopes
statistical models
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Summary:Stable isotope analysis is frequently used to examine resource use in wild populations, but it often involves invasive or lethal methods of collecting tissue samples. The development of less invasive or nonlethal sampling techniques will expand the possible uses of stable isotopes. We examined whether fish eggs meet three basic requirements for inferring female resource use from them: (1) the isotope composition of the eggs is correlated with that of other maternal tissues for which isotope composition is known to be related to diet; (2) the isotope composition remains constant over the egg development period; and (3) dietary inferences using eggs are similar to those for other maternal tissues. Using artificial crosses, we tested the relationship between eggs and two commonly sampled maternal tissues (white muscle and liver) in wild-caught Bluegills Lepomis macrochirus . We found that egg isotope composition was strongly correlated with that of other maternal tissues, particularly liver, and remained constant from prefertilization to the day of hatch, with no change in ¹³C and an increase of only 0.3‰ in ¹⁵N. Furthermore, the results of SIAR (Stable Isotope Analysis in R) mixing models indicated a large degree of overlap in diet estimates between eggs and the other maternal tissues. Overall, eggs can be reliably used to infer the prebreeding foraging ecology of female Bluegills throughout the egg development period. Received July 10, 2014; accepted October 28, 2014
ISSN:1548-8659
0002-8487
1548-8659
DOI:10.1080/00028487.2014.986337