Previous studies have suggested foliar δ13C generally increases with altitude. However, some observations reported no changes or even decreased trends in foliar δ13C. We noted that all the studies in which δ13C increased with elevation were conducted in the human regions, whereas those investigations in which δ13C did not vary or decreased were conducted in areas with water stress. Thus, we pro...

Nitrogen and carbon stable isotopic compositions (δ15N and δ13C) of consumers have been used for physiological and food web studies. Previous studies have shown δ15N and δ13C values are affected by several biological and environmental factors during starvation, but the generality of the effect of starvation on δ15N and δ13C values has not yet been tested. Here, we performed a meta-analysis to e...

Stable isotope mixing models in aquatic ecology require δ13C values for food web end members such as phytoplankton and bacteria, however it is rarely possible to measure these directly. Hence there is a critical need for improved methods for estimating the δ13C ratios of phytoplankton, bacteria and terrestrial detritus from within mixed seston. We determined the δ13C values of lipids, phospholi...

The concentration of the carbon-13 isotope (leaf δ13C) in leaves is negatively correlated with the mean annual precipitation (MAP) at large geographical scales. In this paper, we explain the spatial pattern of leaf δ13C variation for deciduous oriental oak (Quercus variabilis Bl.) across temperate and subtropical biomes and its sensitivity to climate factors such as MAP. There was a 6‰ variatio...

Between January 1995 and August 1996, suspended matter and zooplankton were sampled at different locations in a mangrove ecosystem located in the Gautami Godavari estuary and adjacent Kakinada Bay (Andhra Pradesh, India). Suspended matter was sampled at 13 different stations, and was found to have a highly variable carbon stable isotope composition, with δ13C values ranging overall between –30....

The fact that the deep-ocean benthic δ13C minimum shifted from the North Pacific to the South Atlantic during the Last Glacial Maximum is often interpretted as evidence of a change in deep water circulation, such as the development of deep water ventilation in the North Pacific or a decrease in Southern Ocean overturning. This study reevaluates the implications of changes in benthic δ13C gradie...

Consumer-diet discrimination factors (Δ15N and Δ13C) are often applied without corroboration from laboratory experiments. Deviations in Δ15N and Δ13C that may occur from different diet types were quantified by raising 120 sea urchins Lytechinus variegatus in laboratory tanks on 3 different diets: seagrass Thalassia testudinum, red foliose macroalgae (Grauteloupia sp. and Palmaria palmata) and a...

Pigs were raised on six isotopically controlled diets to examine the dietary macronutrients used in the synthesis of bulk bone biochemical components (apatite, collagen and lipids) and individual compounds (bone fatty acids, cholesterol and amino acids from collagen). δ13C values of apatite and bulk bone lipids reflected those of the whole diet, with Capatite-whole diet = 10.2 ± 1.3‰ and Cbone ...

Plant δ13C-temperature (δ-T) relation has been established in many systems and is often used as paleotemperature transfer function. However, it is still unclear about the exact contributions of temperature variation to plant 13C discrimination because of covariation between temperature and precipitation (aridity), which reduces confidence in reconstruction of paleoclimate. In this study, we mea...

Analyses of carbon stable isotopes are often used to estimate the contributions of allochthonous and autochthonous dietary resources to aquatic consumers. Most pelagic food web studies assume that all phytoplankton taxa have a similar δ13C value. We studied pelagic food web compartments (dissolved inorganic carbon [DIC], phytoplankton, bacteria, seston, cladoceran zooplankton) in 12 small (< 0....