Whats in a food web?

The short answer: everything.

A food web is the blueprint of an ecosystem — showing how energy and nutrients move through rivers, oceans, or woodlands to fuel life from microscopic plants to wide-ranging carnivores.

I’ve always been fascinated by food webs (strange, I know!). But understanding how ecosystems function isn’t just an academic curiosity — it’s essential for solving real-world challenges:

• Curious about the resources that fuel migrating birds? The answer is in the food web.

• Want to know how invasive species disrupt ecosystems? The answer is in the food web.

• Need to identify the prey that support commercial fisheries or how predators interact with key species? You guessed it — the answer is in the food web.

Stable Isotopes: A Window into Ecosystems

Stable isotopes provide a unique way of “decoding” food webs. Carbon, sulphur, and hydrogen isotopes trace the origin of primary production, while nitrogen isotopes reveal an organism’s position in the food chain. Together, these tools let researchers uncover predator–prey relationships, ecosystem processes, and the impacts of environmental change.

By comparing results across multiple food webs, we can see how ecosystems respond to pressures like habitat loss, pollution, or invasive species.

Example: Terrestrial food webs based on C3 and C4 plants (A) and a coastal marine food web (B). Adapted from Ben-David & Flaherty (2012). DOI: 10.1644/11-MAMM-S-166.1

Twenty Years of Food Web Research

Over the past two decades, I’ve applied stable isotope analysis to food webs across the globe:

• Revealing the overwintering strategies of fish in frozen Arctic lakes.

• Assessing the impacts of agriculture on streams, river and lakes.

• Helping manage aquaculture to reduce impacts on nearby fisheries.

In each case, stable isotopes provided insights that traditional methods couldn’t — helping scientists, managers, and industry partners make better decisions.

Bringing Food Web Science to You

Through Atomic Ecology, I’m excited to make these tools accessible beyond academia. Whether you’re in fisheries, aquaculture, conservation, or environmental consulting, stable isotope analysis can give you the answers you need.

📩 Get in touch by email or WhatsApp today to explore how stable isotopes can help your project.