The organic flight Recorder : Lifetime connectivity and habitat reconstructions with fish otolith amino acids

Abstract

With increasing disturbances to fish habitats, it is becoming essential to understand how fish species use and move between different habitats during their lifetime. This will lead to a better comprehension of how environmental changes will impact the population and how to mitigate these effects. The proteinaceous matrix of fish otoliths could provide a direct connection to the biological environment and facilitates the extraction of lifetime resource utilization, trophic position, nitrogen dynamics, and migration. With compound specific isotope analysis of delta13C and delta15N values in amino acids (CSIA-AA) of Cynoscion acoupa otoliths, this thesis is among the first to identify how this technique can be applied to long-term biogenic carbonate records such as fish otoliths in a technical aspect and the use of CSIA-AA principles for identifying lifetime resource utilization and trophic position.