Sponheimer Matt, Lee-Thorp Julia A
Archaeometry Research Unit, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, 7701, Rondebosch, South Africa.
Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, 08901-1414, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Oecologia. 2001 Jan;126(2):153-157. doi: 10.1007/s004420000498. Epub 2001 Jan 1.
Stable carbon isotope analysis is now an established tool for investigating the diets of fossil taxa, but carbon isotopes provide us with limited information about an animal's ecology. Recent research suggests that mammalian oxygen isotope compositions might also prove profitable sources of ecological information. If we are to exploit this resource, however, we must improve our nascent understanding of oxygen isotope compositions within modern foodwebs. To this end, we have analyzed the oxygen and carbon isotope compositions of nine ecologically diverse, sympatric taxa from Morea Estate, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. These data show that the Morea Estate faunivores are depleted in O compared to herbivores, and among the herbivores, frequent drinkers are relatively depleted in O. While more research is needed to address the mechanisms for and universality of these patterns, these results show oxygen isotope analysis to be a promising avenue of paleoecological research.
稳定碳同位素分析如今已成为研究化石类群饮食的既定工具，但碳同位素为我们提供的关于动物生态的信息有限。最近的研究表明，哺乳动物的氧同位素组成或许也能证明是生态信息的有益来源。然而，如果我们要利用这一资源，就必须提升我们对现代食物网中氧同位素组成的初步认识。为此，我们分析了来自南非姆普马兰加省莫雷阿庄园的9个生态多样、同域分布类群的氧和碳同位素组成。这些数据表明，与食草动物相比，莫雷阿庄园的食肉类动物的氧含量较低，而在食草动物中，频繁饮水的动物的氧含量相对较低。虽然还需要更多研究来探讨这些模式的机制和普遍性，但这些结果表明氧同位素分析是古生态学研究的一个有前景的途径。
