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Delineating the food web structure in an Indian estuary during tropical winter employing stable isotope signatures and mixing model

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Abstract

The food and feeding links and sources in an impacted tropical estuary situated along India’s western coast, the Ulhas River Estuary (URE) was analyzed employing the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic signatures (δ13C and δ15N). Three basal carbon sources, such as mangrove leaves, particulate organic matter (phytoplankton), and detritus, were analyzed together with eight consumer groups from various trophic guilds. The δ13C varied from − 19.67 to − 24.61‰, whereas δ15N ranged from 6.31 to 15.39‰ from the primary consumer to the top predator species. The stable isotope mixing model developed for URE revealed a phytoplankton based pelagic food chain and detritus based benthic food chain in URE. The fairly larger value of SEA (Standard Ellipse Area) in the URE suggest a much broader food web structure and high trophic diversity in the ecosystem. Higher influence of detritus on the assimilated diet of majority of consumers and evidences of nitrogen enrichment in the basal sources such as detritus and particulate organic matter by anthropogenic activities in URE point towards nitrogen pollution and subsequent trophic disturbance in this tropical estuarine ecosystem.

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All the data involved in the present study are provided in the manuscript and the supplementary material.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Director Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)—Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai for providing necessary facilities and financial support to carry out this work. The authors express sincere gratitude to the Director, Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences, Lucknow, for providing the necessary laboratory facilities and Director ICAR- Central Coastal Agricultural Research Institute, Goa for providing the technical support for accomplishing the present work. The authors also express their heartfelt thanks to the fishermen along Naigaon, Vasai, for their kind cooperation with the experimental fishing.

Funding

This work was supported by the PhD fellowship granted by ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education to one of the co-author Dhanya Mohan Lal.

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  1. ICAR- Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Versova, Mumbai, 400061, India

    Dhanya Mohan Lal, Chitra Soman & Zeba Jaffer Abidi

  2. ICAR-Central Coastal Agricultural Research Institute, Goa, 403110, India

    Giri Bhavan Sreekanth

  3. Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences, 53 University Road, Lucknow, 226007, India

    Anupam Sharma

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Contributions

Dhanya Mohan Lal: conceptualization; data collection, data analysis, and original draft preparation. Giri Bhavan Sreekanth: conceptualization, data analysis, and manuscript preparation. Chitra Soman: data collection and analysis. Anupam Sharma: methodology, laboratory supervision, and data interpretation. Zeba Jaffer Abidi: overall supervision and manuscript editing.

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Correspondence to Giri Bhavan Sreekanth.

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Appendix

Appendix

Matrix plots

The matrix plots obtained from the SIMMR analysis from the URE represented the source histograms on the diagonal, correlation between the sources on the lower diagonal, and contour plots of the relationship between the sources on the upper diagonal (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9
figure 9

Matrix plots for trophic chain-source contributions in URE

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9). Large negative correlations indicate that the model cannot discern between the two sources; they may lie close together in iso-space. In the present study, the largest negative correlation is found between mangrove leaves and detritus since they are closer in the iso-space than the other sources. These relations indicate that the model is constrained with some degree of difficulty in segregating the contribution of these sources to the overall food web.

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Lal, D.M., Sreekanth, G.B., Soman, C. et al. Delineating the food web structure in an Indian estuary during tropical winter employing stable isotope signatures and mixing model. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 49412–49434 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-25549-w

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