The influence of drinking water on the δD and δ18O values of house sparrow plasma, blood and feathers

Abstract

SUMMARYWe investigated the relationships between the d deuterium (dD) and the d

An experimental exploration of the incorporation of hydrogen isotopes from dietary sources into avian tissues

“…Ehleringer et al , Bowen et al (Bowen et al, 2009) and Wolf et al (Wolf et al, 2011) have used the slope of the linear relationship between the isotopic value of tissues and that of drinking water as a first-order approximation of the percent contribution of drinking water to tissue isotopic value. In this study, we used standard least-squares regression to characterize the relationship between the  2 H of diet and that of individual tissues.…”

“…First, because the rates at which consumer tissues incorporate the isotopic composition of resources differ (Phillips and Eldridge, 2005), knowledge of the dynamics of isotopic incorporation allows researchers to infer the temporal scope of resources used by an individual and to establish the contributions of intra-and interindividual variation to the range of resources used by a population (Dalerum and Angerbjorn, 2005;Newsome et al, 2009). Second, knowledge of isotopic incorporation makes it possible to estimate the relative contributions of different resources to consumer tissue isotopic values, and to estimate discrimination factors between the isotopic composition of resources and consumer tissues (Wolf et al, 2011;Newsome et al, 2010) or between trophic levels (Post, 2002;Birchall et al, 2005). This need for a thorough understanding of the processes that influence the transfer of stable isotopes from the environment and resources to consumer tissues has motivated researchers to perform experiments and develop mathematical models to describe changes in the isotopic values of consumer tissues after a shift in dietary resources (Phillips and Gregg, 2001;Jardine et al, 2004;Carleton and Martínez del Rio, 2005;Martínez del Rio and Anderson-Sprecher, 2008).…”

“…Previous attempts to determine the relative contributions of diet and drinking water to tissue  2 H were calculated using a variety of mixing models that have yielded a wide range of results (Hobson et al, 1999;Ehleringer et al, 2008;Wang et al, 2009;Solomon et al, 2009;Nielson and Bowen, 2010). In an attempt to combat this complexity, Wolf et al (Wolf et al, 2011) adopted a simple phenomenological strategy that, rather than attempting to determine the exact contributions of drinking water to tissue  2 H, merely sought to characterize the relationship between drinking water  2 H and the tissue  2 H of house sparrows. Here we adopted this same strategy for Japanese quail.…”

“…There are distinct differences in several aspects of the processes that may affect incorporation rates between hydrogen and carbon stable isotopes. For example, the carbon in the organic molecules that comprise animal tissues is entirely derived from diet (DeNiro and Epstein, 1978) whereas the hydrogen in these same molecules can come from several sources (Estep and Dabrowski, 1980;Hobson et al, 1999;Wang et al, 2009;Solomon et al, 2009;Nielson and Bowen, 2010;Wolf et al, 2011). Although the rate of hydrogen incorporation is not likely to be directly caused by that of carbon, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the processes that determine the magnitude of incorporation of carbon (e.g.…”

The human bone oxygen isotope ratio changes with aging

“…Body water comprises a pool of stable oxygen isotopes incorporated into the structure of all the tissues of living organisms, including bones and teeth (White et al, 2004b;Warinner and Tuross, 2010;Wolf et al, 2011). In skeletal tissue, oxygen incorporated into the inorganic matter, mainly occurs in the form of phosphate, carbonate and hydroxide ions (Kohn and Cerling, 2002).…”