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Dr. Oliver Shipley
Postdoctoral Research Fellow 
Department of Biology
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM

There and back again: applications of compound-specific isotopes to study animal ecophysiology

Abstract: Compound-specific approaches (CS-SIA) are a relatively recent but established tool for studying ecological processes. More recently, however, these techniques have shown great promise for studying aspects of animal ecophysiology, because they can be used to trace various biosynthesis pathways of individual compounds. This seminar will provide a general overview of CS-SIA, focusing on novel applications to study various aspects of animal ecophysiology. Specific examples will include the use of amino acid isotopes to study nitrogen balance in elasmobranch fishes across gestation and the fitness consequences of individual-level diet variation in northern lake trout. The potential application of Hydrogen amino acid isotopes will also be discussed. These study examples underscore the utility of molecular isotope approaches for studying ecophysiological processes in animals, further emphasizing the predictive power of non-lethal, intrinsic tracer techniques.