State-dependent capital and income breeding: a novel approach to evaluating individual strategies with stable isotopes

BACKGROUND: Species-specific strategies for financing the costs of reproduction are well understood, forming a continuum ranging from high to low reliance on stored nutrients. Animals relying mostly on stored reserves are termed ‘capital breeders’, whereas ‘income breeders’ rely mostly on concurrent intake when financing the costs of reproduction. The role and adaptive value of individual variation in these strategies remain elusive. Life-history theory posits that capital breeding should be favoured when offspring reproductive value peaks, typically occurring early in the season, and that current income should increasingly be used with progressing season. Because resource limitation may hamper flexible resource allocation, a corollary prediction is that only good-condition individuals may show the expected seasonal shift in resource use. To test this prediction, we examined stable isotopes (δ(13)C and δ(15)N) in blood and lipid-free egg yolk of breeding eider females (Somateria mollissima) from the Baltic Sea to assess the role of individual variation in the use of proteins from local diet vs. stored reserves. RESULTS: We show for the first time that individuals from a single population differ in their utilization of stored reserves and concurrent intake to finance the costs of reproduction. Consistent with our prediction, heavy females predominantly used stored reserves for producing egg yolks early in the season, increasingly relying on local feeding with later onset of breeding, whereas light females showed no seasonal change in allocation strategy. CONCLUSIONS: Stable isotope profiling at the individual level is a powerful tool for monitoring relative changes in investment strategies through time, showing promise as an early warning indicator of ecological change in food webs.