Seasonally resolved growth of freshwater bivalves determined by oxygen and carbon isotope shell chemistry

Abstract

[1] By means of a monitoring experiment in two rivers in the Netherlands, we establish a relationship between seasonally resolved growth rates in unionid freshwater bivalves and their environment. We reconstructed these seasonally resolved growth rates by using relationships of stable isotopes in the shells and their ambient river water. The reconstructed growth rates reveal that shells grow fastest in spring-early summer, when highest food availability occurs in the rivers. In addition, the reconstructed growth rates show that onset and cessation of growth are mainly influenced by water temperature.

Oxygen isotope ratios in the shell of <i>Mytilus edulis</i>: archives of glacier meltwater in Greenland?

“…Many calcitic bivalve species precipitate their shells in oxygen isotopic equilibrium with the ambient water (Chauvaud et al, 2005;Freitas et al, 2012;Hickson et al, 1999) In both equations T is the temperature in K and α is the isotope fractionation factor: (Freitas et al, 2006;Goewert et al, 2007;Versteegh et al, 2010a).…”

“…A valid approach is to compare the δ 18 O c value of the ventral margin with δ 18 O pred values calculated from δ 18 O w values and temperature on the date of shell collection (Versteegh et al, 2010a). Five shells were selected that were collected closest to the water monitoring locations.…”

“…Similarly, during several summer seasons, the shell δ 18 O c records appear "dampened" and do not record low δ 18 O w values (see further discussion below), suggesting an additional summer growth cessation. The δ 18 O pred and δ 18 O c records were aligned by first matching peaks and troughs, and subsequent point-bypoint time-axis shifting (Freitas et al, 2006;Goewert et al, 2007;Versteegh et al, 2010a).…”

Comparative oxygen and carbon isotopic records of Miocene and recent lacustrine unionid bivalves from Poland

“…The op ti mal growth con di tions and the on set of spring growth for the Unionidae are con trolled dom i nantly by wa ter tem per a ture, ex ceed ing the in di vid ual ther mal tol er ance in the cold est re gimes be tween 8 and 13.5°C (Dettman et al, 1999;Ricken et al, 2003;Versteegh et al, 2010). There fore, the cyclic d…”

“…The sta ble ox y gen and car bon isoto pic com po si tion of these biominerals re flects en vi ron men tal sig nals, de liv er ing quan ti ta tive in for ma tion about the hab i tat dur ing the life-span of a given or gan ism, as ex em pli fied by recent stud ies on cor als (e.g., Leder et al, 1996;Beck et al, 1997), foraminifera (e.g., Bemis et al, 1998;Diz et al, 2009), ostracodes (e.g., Xia et al, 1997), fish oto liths (e.g., Patterson, 1998) and molluscs (e.g., Klein et al, 1996;Dettman et al, 1999;Wurster and Patterson, 2001;Versteegh et al, 2009Versteegh et al, , 2010Tao and Grossman, 2010).…”