Incremental analysis of vertebral centra can reconstruct the stable isotope chronology of teleost fishes

1. Isotope analysis has high potential for understanding fish ecology and food-web structure in aquatic ecosystems. The utility of isotope analysis will be greatly improved if we can reconstruct the chronology of several isotopes at multiple growth stages of individual fish. However, no practical methods exist for reconstructing the chronology of light-element isotopes (e.g. δ13C, δ15N, δ34S, and Δ14C) in teleost fishes. Here, we present and test a new analytical approach for reconstructing the isotopic ratios of light isotopes at multiple life-stages in teleost fishes. 2. We sampled an anadromous salmon species, masu salmon Oncorhynchus masou (n = 3), along with water from its natal stream and from the ocean. We subdivided the vertebral centra of the salmon equally into 10 sections and extracted bone collagen from each sample. We then measured the stable sulfur isotope ratios of each vertebral section and compared them with δ34S values of the river water and sea water. We also measured...

1. 同位素分析在理解水生生态系统中的鱼类生态学及食物网结构方面具有巨大潜力。若能重建个体鱼类多个生长阶段中多种同位素的时间序列，则同位素分析的效用将大幅提升。然而，目前尚无实用方法可用于重建硬骨鱼类（teleost fishes）中轻元素同位素（如δ13C、δ15N、δ34S及Δ14C）的时间序列。在此，我们提出并验证了一种新的分析方法，可用于重建硬骨鱼类多个生命阶段中轻元素同位素的同位素比值。
2. 我们采集了溯河产卵的鲑鱼物种——马苏大麻哈鱼（Oncorhynchus masou，n=3），以及其原生溪流与海洋中的水样。我们将鲑鱼的椎体中心等分为10段，并从每个样本中提取骨胶原。随后，我们测量了每个椎体段的稳定硫同位素比值，并将其与河水及海水中的δ34S值进行比较。我们还测量了...