Effects of fixatives on stable isotopes of fish muscle tissue: implications for trophic studies on preserved specimens

Highlights

• Provides a method for resolving trophic level and food web position from museum preserved samples
• Here we are able to measure how food web structure of New Zealand’s commercial fish species have changed over the last 80-90 years
• The method will be a key step for a series of analyses and papers on the changing food web structure of QMS species in New Zealand, with important implication for ecosystem-based management (EBM).

Keywords

animo acids, environmental change, food web, preserved fish, stable isotopes, trophic ecology