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. 2019 Nov;22(11):1990-1992.
doi: 10.1111/ele.13374. Epub 2019 Aug 28.

Stable isotopes are quantitative indicators of trophic niche

Harry H Marshall  1 , Richard Inger  2 , Andrew L Jackson  3 , Robbie A McDonald  2 , Faye J Thompson  4 , Michael A Cant  4
Affiliations

Stable isotopes are quantitative indicators of trophic niche

Harry H Marshall et al. Ecol Lett. 2019 Nov.

Abstract

Hette-Tronquart (2019, Ecol. Lett.) raises three concerns about our interpretation of stable isotope data in Sheppard et al. (2018, Ecol. Lett., 21, 665). We feel that these concerns are based on comparisons that are unreasonable or ignore the ecological context from which the data were collected. Stable isotope ratios provide a quantitative indication of, rather than being exactly equivalent to, trophic niche.

Keywords: Banded mongoose; diet; isotopic niche; niche overlap; stable isotopes; tissue integration time; trophic niche.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Redrawing Hette‐Tronquart’s figure 2A. Isotopic niches of individuals (I1‐8) within a social group showing the mean relative individual niche index (RINI) and niche overlap in each scenario. Hette‐Tronquart’s two panels in his figure 2A contain different numbers of individuals (4 vs. 8). Here, panel (a) corrects the scenario containing four individuals to contain eight, making this comparable with panel (b). Hette‐Tronquart calculates overlap as the mean proportion of each individual’s niche occupied by another group member. Here, panels (a) and (b) show how the overlap values change when this is calculated using the proportion of other group members with which each individual’s niche overlaps.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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