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King eiders use an income strategy for egg production: a case study for incorporating individual dietary variation into nutrient allocation research

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Abstract

The use of stored nutrients for reproduction represents an important component of life-history variation. Recent studies from several species have used stable isotopes to estimate the reliance on stored body reserves in reproduction. Such approaches rely on population-level dietary endpoints to characterize stored reserves (“capital”) and current diet (“income”). Individual variation in diet choice has so far not been incorporated in such approaches, but is crucial for assessing variation in nutrient allocation strategies. We investigated nutrient allocation to egg production in a large-bodied sea duck in northern Alaska, the king eider (Somateria spectabilis). We first used Bayesian isotopic mixing models to quantify at the population level the amount of endogenous carbon and nitrogen invested into egg proteins based on carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios. We then defined the isotopic signature of the current diet of every nesting female based on isotope ratios of eggshell membranes, because diets varied isotopically among individual king eiders on breeding grounds. We used these individual-based dietary isotope signals to characterize nutrient allocation for each female in the study population. At the population level, the Bayesian and the individual-based approaches yielded identical results, and showed that king eiders used an income strategy for the synthesis of egg proteins. The majority of the carbon and nitrogen in albumen (C: 86 ± 18%, N: 99 ± 1%) and the nitrogen in lipid-free yolk (90 ± 15%) were derived from food consumed on breeding grounds. Carbon in lipid-free yolk derived evenly from endogenous sources and current diet (exogenous C: 54 ± 24%), but source contribution was highly variable among individual females. These results suggest that even large-bodied birds traditionally viewed as capital breeders use exogenous nutrients for reproduction. We recommend that investigations of nutrient allocation should incorporate individual variation into mixing models to reveal intraspecific variation in reproductive strategies.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the US Geological Survey Outer Continental Shelf Program and the Minerals Management Service for funding, and the North Slope Borough, ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc., R. Suydam, C. Rea, A.S. Kitaysky, and N. Gundlach for logistical support during fieldwork. S.O. was supported by a Ph.D. fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). We are grateful to R. Federer and the Alaska Sea Life Center for sharing unpublished data on discrimination factors. S. Sekine, A. Hoffmann, R. Bentzen, C. Latty, A. Patterson, J. Liebezeit, and J. Rogalla assisted in bird captures, nest searches, and egg and membrane collection, and S. Sekine performed laboratory preparations of egg components. K. Hobson, J. Bond, and S. Lawson offered advice on laboratory techniques. T. Howe and N. Haubenstock conducted isotope analyses. R. Inger, A. Jackson, and A. Parnell assisted with Bayesian analysis. We appreciate the comments of J. Schmutz, D. Esler, E. Murphy, and two anonymous reviewers on an earlier draft of the manuscript. The work described in this article was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of Alaska Fairbanks under protocol #05-29. Mention of trade names or commercial products is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska, 211 Irving 1, Fairbanks, AK, 99775-6100, USA

    Steffen Oppel, Abby N. Powell & Diane M. O’Brien

  2. Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, US Geological Survey, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK, 99775-7020, USA

    Abby N. Powell

  3. Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska, 311 Irving 1, Fairbanks, AK, 99775-6020, USA

    Abby N. Powell & Diane M. O’Brien

  4. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire, SG19 2DL, UK

    Steffen Oppel

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Correspondence to Steffen Oppel.

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Communicated by Elisabeth Kalko.

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Oppel, S., Powell, A.N. & O’Brien, D.M. King eiders use an income strategy for egg production: a case study for incorporating individual dietary variation into nutrient allocation research. Oecologia 164, 1–12 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-010-1619-z

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