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Caloric content of dominant benthic species from the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas: historical comparisons and the effects of preservation

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Abstract

Energy density of a prey item provides information about the nutrition of a predator. Here, we provide data on energy content of 24 common benthic taxa (18 epifauna and six infauna) from the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas. Mollusks (both bivalves and gastropods) and amphipods had the highest caloric content of the taxa investigated. In light of changing environmental conditions and benthic communities in the Arctic, we compared present-day caloric content of several taxa with measurements conducted for the same taxa in the 1970s. In most cases, caloric content did not differ between historic and present-day values but was higher in two out of seven comparisons for both formalin-preserved samples and frozen materials. We also examined the effect of preservation methods (frozen vs. formalin-preserved) on the caloric content for seven epifaunal taxa. In three of the seven taxa, formalin-preserved specimens had significantly higher energy densities than frozen specimens. These data should make investigators aware of the opportunities and also possible limitations of including energy density values derived in different decades and from different preservation types into their calculations, although more comprehensive and time-controlled studies are needed to generate possible corrections factors.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful for funding for DH through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research under an International Polar Year Student Traineeship grant for undergraduate students (CIPY-03). We are indebted to Dr. P. Bechtel, USDA, for providing access to his bomb calorimeter. We thank Dr. S. Saitoh, Hokkaido University, for the opportunity for DH to participate in the Oshoru Maru cruise and Dr. J. Grebmeier, University of Maryland, for collecting samples in support of this project. We are grateful to Drs. P. Renaud and J-M. Węsławski and an anonymous reviewer for excellent comments that improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA

    Dominic Hondolero, Bodil A. Bluhm & Katrin Iken

  2. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Homer, AK, 99603, USA

    Dominic Hondolero

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  1. Dominic Hondolero
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  2. Bodil A. Bluhm
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  3. Katrin Iken
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Correspondence to Katrin Iken.

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Hondolero, D., Bluhm, B.A. & Iken, K. Caloric content of dominant benthic species from the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas: historical comparisons and the effects of preservation. Polar Biol 35, 637–644 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-011-1107-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-011-1107-x

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