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Deciphering the structure of the West Greenland marine food web using stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N)

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Abstract

The Arctic is facing major environmental changes impacting marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. One way of assessing the responses of an ecosystem to these changes is to quantitatively study food web dynamics. Here, we used stable isotope (δ15N and δ13C) analyses of 39 Arctic marine species to investigate trophic relationships and isotopic niches of the West Greenland food web in 2000–2004. The lowest δ15N values were found for suspension feeding blue mussel (Mytilus edulis; 6.1 ‰) and the highest for polar bear (Ursus maritimus; 20.2 ‰). For δ13C, copepods (Calanus spp.) had the lowest values (−20.4 ‰) and snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) the highest values (−15.8 ‰). Our results show that the three trophic enrichment factor (TEF) approaches used to quantify species trophic positions (fixed TEF of 3.8 and 3.4 ‰ or scaled TEF) did not generally affect trophic modelling and provided similar conclusions. Overall, the findings in this study are in good agreement with previous investigations of other Arctic marine ecosystems. Interestingly, we found little overlap of core isotopic niches used by the four investigated functional groups (mammals, seabirds, fish and invertebrates), except for seabirds and fish where an overlap of 24 % was found. These results provide new insights into species and functional group interactions, as well as into the food web structure and ecosystem functioning of an important Arctic region that can be used as a template to guide future modelling of carbon, energy and contaminant flow in the region.

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency as part of the environmental support programme DANCEA—Danish Cooperation for Environment in the Arctic and the Danish Ministry for Higher Education and Science. The authors are solely responsible for all results and conclusions presented. We acknowledge the assistance from the crew at Paamiut A/S, colleagues at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and the Danish National Environmental Research Institute during field collections. We wish to thank the local hunters and fishermen from Nuuk, Sisimiut, Ummanaq, Saqqaq and Qeqertarsuaq for their collaboration and for supplying us with samples from their local catches and especially Morten Frederiksen for help with the statistical analyses. Environment Canada made available their stable isotope facility in Saskatoon, Canada, for all sample preparation and analyses that were partly financed by an Environment Canada operating grant to KAH. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for improving an earlier draft of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000, Roskilde, Denmark

    Jannie Fries Linnebjerg, Jérôme Fort, Frank F. Rigét & Anders Mosbech

  2. Centre for Animal Movement Research (CAnMove), Lund University, Sölvegatan 37, 223 62, Lund, Sweden

    Jannie Fries Linnebjerg

  3. Environment Canada, 11 Innovation Blvd., Saskatoon, SK, S7N 3H5, Canada

    Keith A. Hobson

  4. Littoral Environnement et Sociétés (LIENSs), UMR 7266 CNRS - University of La Rochelle, 2 Rue Olympe de Gouges, 17000, La Rochelle, France

    Jérôme Fort

  5. National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Section of Oceanography and Climate, Technical University of Denmark, Kavalergården 6, 2920, Charlottenlund, Denmark

    Torkel Gissel Nielsen

  6. Greenland Climate Research Centre, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Nuuk, Greenland

    Torkel Gissel Nielsen

  7. Kalundborg Municipality, Hareskovvej 14-16, 4400, Kalundborg, Denmark

    Per Møller

  8. National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Section for Monitoring and Data, Technical University of Denmark, Nordsøen Forskerpark, Postboks 101, 9850, Hirtshals, Denmark

    Kai Wieland

  9. Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Box 570, 3900, Nuuk, Greenland

    Erik W. Born

  10. Arctic Research Center, Aarhus University, 8000, Aarhus, Denmark

    Frank F. Rigét & Anders Mosbech

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  1. Jannie Fries Linnebjerg
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Linnebjerg, J.F., Hobson, K.A., Fort, J. et al. Deciphering the structure of the West Greenland marine food web using stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N). Mar Biol 163, 230 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-016-3001-0

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