2006/05/01 by Keith A. Hobson, Yves Cherel · 4 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Cephalopods and Marine Biology #Isotope Analysis in Ecology #Marine animal studies overview
paper · doi:10.1139/z06-049
openalex publication_date 2006/05/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Cephalopod beaks are a valuable source of material for stable isotope analysis to reconstruct the feeding ecology of cephalopods and their predators. We conducted a controlled captive-rearing experiment on the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis L., 1758 to 10 months of age. During the first and second months of life, animals were fed mysids ( Mysidopsis sp.) and shrimp ( Palaemonetes pugio Holthuis, 1949), but after 2 months, they were fed a homogeneous diet of shrimp ( Farfantepenaeus aztecus (Ives, 1891) and Litopenaeus setiferus (L., 1767)) until sampling. Soft tissues such as buccal mass, arm, and mantle were enriched in 15 N over the shrimp diet by about 3.3‰, with little change in 13 C, a result in keeping with previous findings for other marine predators. However, beaks showed little isotopic enrichment over the diets at the time of beak formation, with the beak rostral tips representing the neonatal diet and the remaining beak material representing the adult (shrimp) diet. Additionally, for four wild cephalopod species ( Todaropsis eblanae (Ball, 1841), Illex coindetii (Verany, 1839), Loligo vulgaris (Lamarck, 1798), and S. officinalis) obtained commercially in France, we measured δ 13 C and δ 15 N values in lower beaks and soft tissues. Similar to the results of our captive study, soft tissues were consistently enriched in 15 N over beaks by an average of 4.8‰ (range 3.9‰–6.1‰) but were slightly depleted in 13 C by 0.8‰ (0.7‰–1.2‰). The isotopic measurement of cephalopod beaks can thus be used to directly trace the isotopic composition of cephalopod diets and will be a powerful tool in the reconstruction of higher-trophic-level predators of cephalopods, since beaks are often the only material remaining for analysis from field samples.