Publication details
Oxygen isotopes of land snail shells in high latitude regions
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Quaternary Science Reviews |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107382 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107382 |
| Keywords | Alaska; Scandinavia; Paleoclimate; Calibration; Precipitation delta O-18 |
| Description | The present study investigates the environmental significance of the oxygen isotopic composition of several modern land snail species collected along two north-to-south transects in Alaska and Scandinavia at latitudes between 60 and 70 degrees N. We tested the hypothesis that land snail shell delta O-18 values primarily track precipitation delta O-18. The results show that shell delta O-18 values from Scandinavia were similar to 5.1 parts per thousand enriched in O-18 with respect to snails from Alaska, equivalent to differences in precipitation delta O-18 values between the two regions. Within the Alaskan transect, shell delta O-18 values increased with observed increasing air temperature and precipitation delta O-18, whereas shell delta(18)Ovalues from Scandinavia did not correlate to instrumental climate data because of a reduced climatic gradient across the locations sampled. In addition, shell delta O-18 values differed significantly among sympatric species, with larger species consistently exhibiting higher delta O-18 values, which implies that species-level isotopic variations should be considered at the local and microhabitat scale. However, when snail shell delta O-18 values from this study are combined with previously published data from North America and Europe, we see evidence that shell delta O-18 values track precipitation delta O-18 across latitudes, even when different species are combined because climate gradients are greater than variations among taxa. |
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