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Differentiating salmonid migratory ecotypes through stable isotope analysis of collagen: Archaeological and ecological applications

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posted on 2020-08-10, 11:11 authored by Eric Guiry, Thomas CA Royle, RG Matson, Hillary Ward, Tyler Weir, Nicholas Waber, Thomas J Brown, Brian PV Hunt, Michael HH Price, Bruce P Finney, Masahide Kaeriyama, Yuxue Qin, Dongya Y Yang, Paul Szpak
Guiry et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The ability to distinguish between different migratory behaviours (e.g., anadromy and potamodromy) in fish can provide important insights into the ecology, evolution, and conservation of many aquatic species. We present a simple stable carbon isotope (δ13C) approach for distinguishing between sockeye (anadromous ocean migrants) and kokanee (potamodromous freshwater residents), two migratory ecotypes of Oncorhynchus nerka (Salmonidae) that is applicable throughout most of their range across coastal regions of the North Pacific Ocean. Analyses of kokanee (n = 239) and sockeye (n = 417) from 87 sites spanning the North Pacific (Russia to California) show that anadromous and potamodromous ecotypes are broadly distinguishable on the basis of the δ13C values of their scale and bone collagen. We present three case studies demonstrating how this approach can address questions in archaeology, archival, and conservation research. Relative to conventional methods for determining migratory status, which typically apply chemical analyses to otoliths or involve genetic analyses of tissues, the δ13C approach outlined here has the benefit of being non-lethal (when applied to scales), cost-effective, widely available commercially, and should be much more broadly accessible for addressing archaeological questions since the recovery of otoliths at archaeological sites is rare.

Funding

This research was supported in part the Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia (https://www.anth.ubc.ca), as well as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca) Insight Development Grant (Grant 430-2017-01120), SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (Grant 756-2016-0185), and SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Reseach Fellowship awarded to EG. TCAR was supported by a Simon Fraser University Archaeology Graduate Student Caucus Travel and Research Grant (http://www.sfugradsociety.ca), SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral Scholarship) (Grant 767-2014-1915), as well as scholarships and fellowships from Simon Fraser University (https://www.sfu.ca).

History

Citation

Guiry E, Royle TCA, Matson RG, Ward H, Weir T, Waber N, et al. (2020) Differentiating salmonid migratory ecotypes through stable isotope analysis of collagen: Archaeological and ecological applications. PLoS ONE 15(4): e0232180. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232180

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

PLoS ONE

Volume

15

Issue

4

Pagination

25

Publisher

Public Library of Science

issn

1932-6203

eissn

1932-6203

Acceptance date

2020-04-08

Copyright date

2020

Available date

2020-08-10

Spatial coverage

United States

Language

English

Publisher version

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0232180