CORE
🇺🇦
make metadata, not war
Services
Services overview
Explore all CORE services
Access to raw data
API
Dataset
FastSync
Content discovery
Recommender
Discovery
OAI identifiers
OAI Resolver
Managing content
Dashboard
Bespoke contracts
Consultancy services
Support us
Support us
Membership
Sponsorship
Community governance
Advisory Board
Board of supporters
Research network
About
About us
Our mission
Team
Blog
FAQs
Contact us
Carbon stable isotopes suggest that hippopotamus‐vectored nutrients subsidize aquatic consumers in an East African river
Authors
Justin S Brashares
Kelly Caylor
+11 more
Todd E Dawson
Jacques C Finlay
John M Githaiga
Drew B Gower
Francis H Joyce
Rebecca L Lewison
Douglas J McCauley
Wanja D Nyingi
Judith Nyunja
Mordecai Ogada
Mary E Power
Publication date
1 April 2015
Publisher
eScholarship, University of California
Abstract
© 2015 McCauley et al. The common hippopotamus, Hippopotamus amphibius, transports millions of tons of organic matter annually from its terrestrial feeding grounds into aquatic habitats. We evaluated whether carbon stable isotopes (δ13C) can be used as tracers for determining whether H. amphibius-vectored allochthonous material is utilized by aquatic consumers. Two approaches were employed to make this determination: (1) lab-based feeding trials where omnivorous river fish were fed a H. amphibius dung diet and (2) field sampling of fish and aquatic insects in pools with and without H. amphibius. Lab trials revealed that fish fed exclusively H. amphibius dung exhibited significantly more positive δ13C values than fish not fed dung. Fish and aquatic insects sampled in a river pool used for decades by H. amphibius also exhibited more positive δ13C values at the end of the dry season than fish and insects sampled from an upstream H. amphibius-free reference pool. Fish sampled in these same pools at the end of the wet season (high flow) showed no significant differences in δ13C values, suggesting that higher flows reduced retention and use of H. amphibius subsidies. These data provide preliminary evidence that δ13C values may be useful, in certain contexts, for quantifying the importance H. amphibius organic matter
Similar works
Full text
Available Versions
Sustaining member
eScholarship - University of California
See this paper in CORE
Go to the repository landing page
Download from data provider
oai:escholarship.org:ark:/1303...
Last time updated on 25/12/2021