Greater Everglades Burmese python stable isotope data, 2003-2012, and standard ellipse area literature review, 2018

Publication Date

2019-03-29

Start Date

2003-05-01

End Date

2018-06-11

Smith, B.J., Hart, K.M., Demopoulos, A.W.J., and Romagosa, C.M., 2019, Greater Everglades Burmese python stable isotope data, 2003-2012, and standard ellipse area literature review, 2018: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9QQ1KVH.

Burmese pythons are an invasive species in the Greater Everglades Ecosystem and have caused major declines in native mammal communities. Understanding how an invasive predator can impact an entire food web requires an understanding of its function niche, an important concept in ecology. The isotopic niche is a measurable proxy for the functional niche of an organism, and to measure it, we analyzed muscle tissue from Burmese pythons for stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen. By collecting these data, we were able to estimate the size of the isotopic niche of the Burmese python. To put these niche sizes in context, we conducted a literature review to find published sizes of other isotopic niches. We report the papers we found during this literature review and the standard ellipse areas (SEAs, a measurement of the isotopic niche) here.

ScienceBase WMS

ScienceBase WFS

• USGS Data Release Products
• USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center