[PDF] Assessing the applicability of stable isotope analysis to determine the contribution of landfills to vultures’ diet | Semantic Scholar (2024)

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The empirical testing of three of the most widely used methods of diet determination highlights the limits of relying over a single approach, especially in systems with few or no a priori information about the foraging habits of consumers.

The performance of BSIMMs in quantifying animal diets when using δ13C and δ15N stable isotope ratios from the feathers and red blood cells of common buzzard Buteo buteo chicks is evaluated.

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Management measures that can control abundant pest species but, in the long term, other measures as supplementary feeding should be considered to counteract the probable negative effect of the disappearance of landfills on endangered species.

The research demonstrates that both δ13C and δ15N in free-living wild boar tissues are influenced by sampling area, and according to feeding habits of the species and wildlife management (feed supplementation), the differences observed are based on the specific feeding regime; particularly the use of corn in wintertime.

The ability to track inter-annual and species-specific differences in penguin diets using SIA was enhanced by integrating SCA data to isotopic mixing modes in three ways: selecting appropriate prey sources, weighting combinations of isotopically similar prey in two-source mixing models and refining predicted contributions of isotoped prey in multi-source models.

The results showed how food availability, and principally, how food predictability, determines ranging behavior of this species, and emphasize the importance of anthropogenic predictable sources of food in shaping the space use of scavengers, which is in agreement with recent findings.

The analyses of meat samples indicate that it is possible to trace back the region by using isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen, and authenticity of beef is not only linked with the geographical origin but can also reflect the differentiation of organic and conventional farming.

The results showed that after the reduction in numbers of supplementary feeding stations (vulture restaurants) the niche breadth of the griffon vulture has broadened and now includes significant amounts of wild rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and garbage.

Stable isotope signatures and the use of mixing models are useful tools for the rapid assessment of feeding ecology in certain populations, and solving analytical biases should be considered in future feeding studies, thereby saving time and minimising bird disturbance by using an isotopic methodology.

Conventional samples provide more species-level information than stable isotope analysis, so a combined approach would be most useful for diet analysis and assessing a predator's impact on particular prey groups.

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