Fish's Fitness Tracker (IMAGE)
Caption
This is the fish's fitness tracker. The carbon in fish otoliths comes from two sources, partly from the water in the form of dissolved inorganic carbon (blue bullets) and partly from the food burnt off as part of the fish's metabolism (red bullets). Carbon from the two sources is diffused into the fish's blood. When the fish's metabolism increases, the proportion of carbon from the food increases, and there will be more "red bullets" in the blood supplying the carbon to the otoliths in the fish's inner ear. In this way, the growth rings of the otoliths continuously record record information on the fish's metabolism in the form of the so-called delta 13C value.
Credit
Illustration: Ming Tsung-Chung
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