Trophic transfer of fatty acids in marine food webs

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The research interests of my group are focused on the use of lipids and fatty acids (FA) as tools to study carbon flow and food web dynamics in the marine environment. FA are well suited to such studies because many dietary FA are incorporated into consumers with only minor modifications to structure, making FA useful as indicators or biomarkers of their source. Here, we propose to continue our ongoing work investigating the transfer of FA from prey to predators at low trophic levels by examining trophic transfer efficiencies of FA. This is a measure of the amount of FA deposited in a predator’s tissue relative to the amount available in its diet, and we believe these will vary with consumer, concentration of FA and FA structure. Several FA, such as long chain omega-3 FA, are essential nutrients, required for growth and survival by all organisms. In the marine food web, the majority of these essential FA are synthesized only by phytoplankton; thus, it is particularly important to understand the efficiency with which such nutrients are transferred from diet to consumer. Trophic transfer efficiencies can also be incorporated into methods we are developing to estimate consumer diets by comparison of FA patterns, or profiles, in predator and prey. They are important in that application because they allow us to compensate for changes made to the diet FA profile by catabolism and other processes in the predator.