Tracking human travel using stable oxygen and hydrogen isotope analyses of hair and urine

Abstract

The stable oxygen and hydrogen isotope compositions of organic samples are increasingly being used to investigate patterns of animal migration. Relatively few studies have applied these techniques to modern humans, despite a variety of potential forensic applications. We analyzed drinking water and food at two geographic locations, East Greenbush, New York (USA) and Fairbanks, Alaska

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

“…The percentage contribution of drinking water to the hydrogen content of house sparrow tissues was lower than previous estimates for similar tissues in other bird species [20-32% (Hobson et al, 1999)] and humans [36% (O'Brien and Wooler, 2007) and 27% ], but higher than those estimated by Solomon et al for salmonid fishes (Solomon et al, 2009). Granivorous passerines, such as house sparrows, have relatively low drinking water requirements (MacMillen, 1990).…”

Hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in human hair are related to geography

“…Given the fooddistribution systems available today and the general availability of all food types throughout the United States, we assume that the U.S. residents sampled here largely consume food from a ''continental supermarket'' diet that is isotopically homogeneous, and adopt average values for ␦ 2 H d and ␦ 18 O d of Ϫ115‰ and ϩ 26.0‰ based on our own unpublished data, which are similar to other recent observations (27,28). The value of ␦ 18 O wd is determined from ␦ 18 O d based on the average isotopic enrichment of plant carbohydrates relative to water (29), and ␦ 18 O O2 is assigned the global average value of ϩ23.5‰.…”

Expanding the Isotopic Toolbox: Applications of Hydrogen and Oxygen Stable Isotope Ratios to Food Web Studies

“…Nevertheless, these shifts can provide an opportunity to examine ecological strategies of resource use (Wunder et al, 2012). Little work has addressed turnover with respect to H and O isotope ratios specifically, and tissue-specific times derived from other systems may or may not apply (O'Brien and Wooller, 2007;Podlesak et al, 2008;Storm-Suke et al, 2012).…”

“…Theoretical models derived for predicting the isotopic composition of human hair based on drinking water and dietary inputs explain 85% of the variability in observed variations of samples from the United States (Craig, 1961), ranging from 5.0 to 8.3 in humans (Fraser et al, 2006;O'Brien and Wooller, 2007;Ehleringer et al, 2008;Bowen et al, 2009;Thompson et al, 2010); 6.4-7.2 in birds (Wolf et al, 2011);and 3.8-5.8 in insects (McCluney and Sabo, 2010). The shallower slope may be a result of differing and separate controls on δ 2 H tissue and δ 18 O tissue values, such as proportion local diet fraction and fraction of tissue H fixed in vivo (Bowen et al, 2009).…”