An experimental study in wild wood mice testing elemental and isotope analysis in faeces to determine variations in food intake amount
Elemental and stable isotope analyses are useful and common methods for wildlife diet studies, e.g., for characterizing diets and trophic relationships. However, little is known about the potential applicability of these techniques to address other aspects of feeding ecology. Here, we evaluated whet...
| Autores: | , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2023 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid |
| Repositorio: | Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/707990 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10486/707990 https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani13071176 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Diet Feeding Behaviour Rodents Stable Isotopes Trophic Ecology Apodemus Sylvaticus Biología y Biomedicina / Biología |
| Sumario: | Elemental and stable isotope analyses are useful and common methods for wildlife diet studies, e.g., for characterizing diets and trophic relationships. However, little is known about the potential applicability of these techniques to address other aspects of feeding ecology. Here, we evaluated whether faecal elemental (carbon and nitrogen) and/or isotopic values (δ 13C, δ 15N) can determine variations in the amount of food intake. Overall, elemental analyses and δ 15N values failed in reporting significant differences, but preliminary outcomes support the potential use of faecal δ 13C values as an indicator to detect short-term slight food intake changes. The results of this work provide, for the first-time, reference data for interpreting faecal elemental and isotopic patterns in free-ranging wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus), as well as new insights into the additional applicability of isotopic analysis in feeding ecology studies |
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