Boulêtreau, S., Vagnon, C., Comte, L. et al. (13 more authors) (2025) IsoFresh: A global stable isotope database of freshwater food webs. Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems (426). 15. ISSN 1961-9502
Abstract
Ecologists seek to understand the ways that human activities are altering the structures and processes that support biodiversity and nature's contributions to people. Food web research at the interface of community and ecosystem ecology is promising in this regard. An industry of studies has utilized stable isotopes in recent decades to rapidly characterize energy and material transfer among organisms in freshwater food webs. Nevertheless, these efforts have been somewhat siloed and mainly locally-based, and lack of a centralized database has limited efforts to tackle questions about food web change using isotopes at a global scale. Here we present IsoFresh, a freshwater food web database that contains species-level carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) stable isotope values for 15343 organisms, representing 1001 food webs and including > 1600 fish species and associated potential prey, from 65 countries around the globe. Our hope is that IsoFresh is used to explore fundamental and applied food web questions, contributing new knowledge about global environmental change so that human societies can better conserve and manage freshwater ecosystems along desirable future trajectories.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © S. Boulêtreau et al., Published by EDP Sciences 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY-ND (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material. |
Keywords: | Stable isotope analyses, food web architecture, trophic interaction, trophic niche, fish, macroinvertebrates, human perturbations, freshwater ecosystems |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) MR/X035662/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 25 Apr 2025 13:10 |
Last Modified: | 20 Jun 2025 08:49 |
Published Version: | https://www.kmae-journal.org/articles/kmae/full_ht... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | EDP Sciences |
Identification Number: | 10.1051/kmae/2025010 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:225751 |
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Filename: IsoFresh A global stable isotope database of freshwater.pdf
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