15N/14N ratios of amino acids as a tool for studying terrestrial food webs: a case study of terrestrial insects (bees, wasps, and hornets)
By Y. Chikaraishi, N. Ogawa, Hideyuki Doi, N. Ohkouchi. Ecological research, 2011
142 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Compound-specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) of amino acids is a new method that enables estimates of trophic position for consumers in food webs. We examined the nitrogen isotopic composition (δ15N) of amino acids of Japanese social insects (three bee, three wasp, and four hornet species) to evaluate the potential of CSIA of amino acids in studies of terrestrial food webs. For wasps, we also examined samples at different growth stages (ranging from egg to adult) to assess the effect of metamorphosis on CSIA estimates of trophic position. The δ15N values of bulk tissues for Japanese social insects are only weakly correlated with the biologically expected trophic positions. In contrast, the trophic positions estimated from the δ15N values of amino acids (yielding values of between 2.0 and 2.3 for bees, between 2.8 and 3.3 for wasps, and between 3.5 and 4.1 for hornets) are consistent with the biologically expected trophic positions for these insects (i.e., 2.0 for bees, 3.0 for wasps, and 3.0–4.0 for hornets). Although large variability is observed among the δ15N values of individual amino acids (e.g., ranging from 3.0 to 14.9‰ for phenylalanine), no significant change is observed in the trophic position during wasp metamorphosis. Thus, the CSIA of amino acids is a powerful tool for investigating not only aquatic food webs but also terrestrial food webs with predatory insects.
Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/45237137431e50e479536b008d71088fde42ba0f
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Citations in the corpus
- Biochemical and physiological bases for the use of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in environmental and ecological studies (2015, background): “In terrestrial plants, the value of β was estimated to be 8.4 ± 1.6 (Figure 10b; Chikaraishi et al. 2011; Steffan et al. 2013).”
- Use of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in insect trophic ecology (2015, background): “Indeed, this has been successfully applied to terrestrial insects, such as caterpillars, bees and wasps (Chikaraishi et al. 2011).”