Assessment of a Sr isotope vital effect (87Sr/86Sr) in marine taxa from Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas

Data from Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas, confirms the hypothesis that there are no vital effects with the uptake of Sr isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) at the present mass spectrometer resolution [±2×10−5 (2σ)]. Our data set contains analyses of 40 samples derived from 37 different calcareous taxa inhabiting a wide range of carbonate subenvironments (i.e., reefal, intertidal, supratidal, mangrove). The mean value of our analyses was 0.709179 with a standard deviation of 2.4×10−5 (2σ) which was very close to the long-term uncertainty of the strontium isotope methodology [±2.0×10−5 (2σ)] and to the widely reported 87Sr/86Sr value of seawater, which clusters around 0.709175.