Tracking marine food sources
Oceans cover nearly 75 percent of the earth's surface and have always been an important source of food and resources. Yet overfishing, pollution and mismanagement threaten marine ecosystems and thus one of the earth's most important sources. We can help to restore these ecosystems by understanding how they work and what affects them. Marine ecosystems have a multitude of organisms that depend on each other for food and nutrients. Researchers know surprisingly little about where marine living animals get their nutrients because the origins of nutrients used to be intractable once it had been digested by the animal. An international research collaboration of scientists together with Kiel's Cluster of Excellence "The Future Ocean" now introduces a new method based on stable isotopes that can trace one of the most essential compounds for life, protein amino acids, back to the original source. These findings have recently been published in the international...