Abstract
Today, isotopes play critical roles in a variety of technological applications of importance to our modern society and are also vital to scientific research across diverse scientific disciplines. This article is divided into two sections. The first is an overview of isotope principles. Here, it is addressed what isotopes are, word origin and history, measurement, notation and terminology, and types of isotopes. Applications of radioactive and stable isotopes are also reviewed. The second part focuses on the application of stable isotopes in food web research. This section is devoted to the benefits of using stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes to elucidate food web structure, trophic interactions, nutrient flux, and retrospective geolocation. The use of ฮด15N as tracer in ecological systems, in particular as an indicator of nitrogen pollution to ecosystems, is also addressed. The importance of using stable isotopes in mixing models for diet reconstruction as well as using stable isotopes in the modeling of food web network structure is explored. This section also examines limitations of stable isotope analysis in food web studies.
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