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. 2024 Apr 3;14(1):7899.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-57339-w.

Amino acid-specific isotopes reveal changing five-dimensional niche segregation in Pacific seabirds over 50 years

Affiliations

Amino acid-specific isotopes reveal changing five-dimensional niche segregation in Pacific seabirds over 50 years

Francis van Oordt et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Hutchison's niche theory suggests that coexisting competing species occupy non-overlapping hypervolumes, which are theoretical spaces encompassing more than three dimensions, within an n-dimensional space. The analysis of multiple stable isotopes can be used to test these ideas where each isotope can be considered a dimension of niche space. These hypervolumes may change over time in response to variation in behaviour or habitat, within or among species, consequently changing the niche space itself. Here, we use isotopic values of carbon and nitrogen of ten amino acids, as well as sulphur isotopic values, to produce multi-isotope models to examine niche segregation among an assemblage of five coexisting seabird species (ancient murrelet Synthliboramphus antiquus, double-crested cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus, Leach's storm-petrel Oceanodrama leucorhoa, rhinoceros auklet Cerorhinca monocerata, pelagic cormorant Phalacrocorax pelagicus) that inhabit coastal British Columbia. When only one or two isotope dimensions were considered, the five species overlapped considerably, but segregation increased in more dimensions, but often in complex ways. Thus, each of the five species occupied their own isotopic hypervolume (niche), but that became apparent only when factoring the increased information from sulphur and amino acid specific isotope values, rather than just relying on proxies of δ15N and δ13C alone. For cormorants, there was reduction of niche size for both species consistent with a decline in their dominant prey, Pacific herring Clupea pallasii, from 1970 to 2006. Consistent with niche theory, cormorant species showed segregation across time, with the double-crested demonstrating a marked change in diet in response to prey shifts in a higher dimensional space. In brief, incorporating multiple isotopes (sulfur, PC1 of δ15N [baselines], PC2 of δ15N [trophic position], PC1 and PC2 of δ13C) metrics allowed us to infer changes and differences in food web topology that were not apparent from classic carbon-nitrogen biplots.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Average centroid locations for all species in 5 dimensions from 100 000 samples drawn from the posterior distribution (where PC1Css, PC2Css, PC1Nss, and PC2Nss are the first and second principal component of carbon and nitrogen isotope values of amino acids, respectively. stdDeltaS is the standardized value of sulphur values). ANMU ancient murrelet, DCCO double-crested cormorant, LSPE Leach’s storm-petrel, PECO pelagic cormorant, RHAU rhinoceros auklet. These are relative positions when comparing one species to another and polygons do not represent niche size or shape (the PCA axes were not rotated).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Graphical representation of the percentage of directional niche overlap between all pairs of species. Percentage of overlap represents first species overlapping on second species. See Fig. 1 caption for species abbreviations.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Graphical representation of niche sizes in (A) 2D (covariance ellipses), (B) 3D (covariance ellipsoids) [yellow = ancient murrelet, red = double-crested cormorant, purple = Leach’s storm-petrel, black = pelagic cormorant, green = rhinoceros auklet], and (C) 5D (simple five-dimensional plotting of 1 k random points) for five species of seabirds in the British Columbia coast, where colour is the 4th dimension (PC2Css), and circle size the 5th dimension (PC2Nss).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Centroid locations for DCCO and PECO in 5 dimensions in two time periods (where PC1Css, PC2Css, PC1Nss, and PC2Nss are the first and second principal components of carbon and nitrogen isotopes of amino acids, respectively. stdDeltaS is the standardized value of δ sulphur.

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