Replication Data for: Using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) to predict carbon and nitrogen stable isotope composition in animal tissues

1. Stable isotopes analysis (SIA) of carbon and nitrogen provides valuable information about trophic interactions and animal feeding habits. 2. We used near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) and support vector machines (SVM) to develop a model for screening isotopic ratios of carbon and nitrogen (δ13C and δ15N) in samples from living animals. We applied this method on dried blood samples from birds previously analysed for δ13C and δ15N to test whether NIRS can be applied to accurately predict isotopic ratios. 3. Our results show a prediction accuracy of NIRS (R2>0.65, RMSEP<0.28) for both δ13C and δ15N, representing a 12% of the measurement range in this study. 4. Our study suggests that NIRS can provide a time- and cost-efficient method to evaluate stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen when substantial differences in δ13C or δ15N are expected, such as when discriminating among different trophic levels in diet.

碳和氮的稳定同位素分析（SIA）为营养相互作用与动物摄食习性提供了宝贵信息。本研究采用近红外反射光谱法（NIRS）和支撑向量机（SVM）建立了一种模型，用于筛选来自活体动物的碳和氮同位素比值（δ13C和δ15N）。该方法应用于先前已分析δ13C和δ15N的鸟类干燥血样，以检验NIRS能否准确预测同位素比值。我们的结果表明，NIRS在预测δ13C和δ15N方面具有高预测精度（R2>0.65，RMSEP<0.28），代表本研究的测量范围内12%的变化范围。本研究表明，当预期δ13C或δ15N存在显著差异时，如在不同营养级饮食中进行区分时，NIRS提供了一种节省时间和成本的评估稳定同位素比值的方法。