Biomarkers in ringed seals reveal recent onset of borealization in the high- compared to the mid-latitude Canadian Arctic
Abstract
Warming of the Arctic has resulted in environmental and ecological changes, termed borealization, leading to the northward shift of temperate species. Borealization has occurred across all trophic levels, altering the structure of the food web. The onset and rate of borealization likely varies with latitude, depending on local warming and advection of warmer water into the Arctic. In order to assess latitudinal trends in food web structure in the Arctic, we analyzed stable nitrogen isotopes of specific amino acids alongside bulk stable carbon isotopes in ringed seal muscle tissue from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (high-Arctic) and Southern Baffin Bay (mid-Arctic) from 1990 to 2016. Our results indicate a shift in food web structure in the high-Arctic that has occurred more recently when compared with the mid-Arctic. Specifically, over the past 25 years, the trophic position of ringed seals from the mid-Arctic was largely constant, whereas the trophic position of ringed seals decreased in the high-Arctic, reaching similar values observed in the mid-Arctic in 2015-2016. This suggests a potential shortening of the food chain length in the high-Arctic, possibly driven by changes in zooplankton communities feeding complexity in association with sea ice decline. This study identifies a temporal offset in the timing of borealization in the Canadian Arctic, resulting in different response of food webs to ecological changes, depending on latitude.
Citation
de la Vega , C , Mahaffey , C , Yurkowski , D J , Norman , L , Simpson , E , Smout , S , Ferguson , S H & Jeffreys , R M 2021 , ' Biomarkers in ringed seals reveal recent onset of borealization in the high- compared to the mid-latitude Canadian Arctic ' , Frontiers in Marine Science , vol. 8 , 700687 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.700687
Publication
Frontiers in Marine Science
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2296-7745Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2021 de la Vega, Mahaffey, Yurkowski, Norman, Simpson, Smout, Ferguson and Jeffreys. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Description
This work resulted from the ARISE project (NE/P006035/1), part of the Changing Arctic Ocean program, funded by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.