Yurena Yanes Jeffrey S. Pigati Jason A. Rech Ted von Proschwitz Jeffrey C. Nekola P. Rioual Catherine Nield 2022 <div id="abstracts" class="Abstracts u-font-serif"><div id="abs0010" class="abstract author" lang="en"><div id="abssec0010"><p id="abspara0010">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 °N. We tested the hypothesis that land snail shell δ¹⁸O values primarily track precipitation δ¹⁸O. The results show that shell δ¹⁸O values from Scandinavia were ∼5.1‰ enriched in<span>&nbsp;</span>¹⁸O with respect to snails from Alaska, equivalent to differences in precipitation δ¹⁸O values between the two regions. Within the Alaskan transect, shell δ¹⁸O values increased with observed increasing air temperature and precipitation δ¹⁸O, whereas shell δ¹⁸O values from Scandinavia did not correlate to instrumental climate data because of a reduced climatic gradient across the locations sampled. In addition, shell δ¹⁸O values differed significantly among sympatric species, with larger species consistently exhibiting higher δ¹⁸O values, which implies that species-level isotopic variations should be considered at the local and microhabitat scale. However, when snail shell δ¹⁸O values from this study are combined with previously published data from North America and Europe, we see evidence that shell δ¹⁸O values track precipitation δ¹⁸O across latitudes, even when different species are combined because climate gradients are greater than variations among taxa.</p></div></div></div><ul id="issue-navigation" class="issue-navigation u-margin-s-bottom u-bg-grey1"></ul> application/pdf 10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107382 en Elsevier Oxygen isotopes of land snail shells in high latitude regions article