Effects of ethanol storage and lipid extraction on stable isotope compositions of twelve pelagic predators

作者：Yongfu Shen, David Mboglen, Yi Gong, Feng Wu, Yunkai Li · 发表于：Frontiers in Marine Science · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.3389/fmars.2023.1118013 · 被引用次数：8 · 研究领域：Isotope Analysis in Ecology、Marine animal studies overview、Marine Bivalve and Aquaculture Studies

Stable isotope analysis (SIA) has proven to be a powerful tool in reconstructing diets and characterizing trophic relationships for pelagic predators. Ethanol has been a common preservative solution for biopsy samples from remote areas and archived collections. It is still under debate whether the effects of ethanol (ET) would bias the trophic interpretation of the stable isotope values. Further, lipid extraction (LE) is becoming more popular as a general treatment for standardization prior to SIA, particularly for investigating intra and interspecific variation of sympatric species, because lipids have lower δ 13 C values. In this study, the long-term (up to 448 days) effects of treatment ET and combined treatments ET and LE (ET+LE) on stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values (δ 13 C and δ 15 N, respectively) of twelve pelagic predators from the open ocean were evaluated. Results showed that compared with control values, δ 15 N values displayed a positive change (δ 15 N mean offset was 0.71 ± 0.56‰) but δ 13 C values had variable results (δ 13 C mean offset was 0.42 ± 0.64‰) among all species following treatment with ET during the first 28 days and then remained stable throughout the experiment. Compared with treatment LE results, no difference was observed in δ 13 C, δ 15 N values, and C/N ratios through time following treatment ET+LE. These results indicated that treatment ET may have species-specific effects on stable isotope values, and the shifts from treatment LE coul...