I have samples of soil organisms that were extracted with benzoic acid and stored in glycerol, and I would like to analyze their d15N and d13C. I would think d13C may be quite affected. However, I can’t find a reference talking specifically about the effects of glycerin and benzoic acid on the d13C and d15N signature in organic tissues.
Thank you very much in advance.
I'm not sure if there is a standard fudge factor for this. Typically with formalin / ethanol preserved specimens there is a 1 - 2 per mil enrichment in 13C. I suspect that as both the extraction and preservation reagents are organic this will be a lot greater. would advise you perhaps run a couple of reagent standards with your samples. You could probably do this by treating some combusted GF/F filters with your reagents and running these through the IRMS.
Personally I not advice not the use of the benzoïc acid and the glycerol to preserve of soil arthropods .Typically with formalin / ethanol..
It is very difficult to remove of glycerin and very difficult to estimate the gap on the values of 13C. There is no guarantee that the correction is regular and identical for all the samples.
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