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Review on the feeding ecology and migration patterns of sharks using stable isotopes.

LI Yun-kai1,2,3   

  1. 1College of Marine Sciences, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai 201306, China; 2National Engineering Research Centre for Oceanic Fisheries, Shanghai 201306, China; 3The Key Laboratory of Sustainable Exploitation of Oceanic Fisheries Resources, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 201306, China)
  • Online:2014-09-18 Published:2014-09-18

Abstract: With the rapidly increasing use of stable isotope analysis (SIA) in ecology, it becomes a powerful tool and complement to traditional methods for investigating the trophic ecology of animals. Sharks play a keystone role in marine food webs as the apex predators and are recently becoming the frontier topic of food web studies and marine conservation because of their unique characteristics of evolution. Recently, SIA has recently been applied to trophic ecology studies of shark species. Here, we reviewed the current applications of SIA in shark species, focusing on available tissues for analyzing, standardized analytical approaches, diettissue discrimination factors, diet shift investigation, migration patterns predictions and nichewidth analyses, with the aim of getting better understanding of stableisotope dynamics in shark biology and ecology research.