This paper estimates the ¹³⁷Cs ecological half-life of white-tailed deer inhabiting the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS) based on sex and age using data collected over a 51-year time-period. With a physical half-life of 30.2 yr, the biological half-life for the deer herd is considerably shorter because of the isotope's biochemical mimicry of K+ inside the body. Leveraging this long-term dataset and robust sample size, we compared the long-term half-century estimates to shorter decadal increments. The simple exponential decay model for the entire 51-year sampling period predicted an ecological half-life of 23.15 years. When breaking the sample data into decadal increments ¹³⁷Cs body burden had complex temporal dynamics with predicted half-lives ranging from 9.25 to 32.33 years. Exponential decay for the entire 51-year sampling period for models evaluated by sex, age, sex*age to determine how these variables influence the predictability in the mean depuration rate, the ecological half-lives were between 21 and 23 years for all permutations, except for fawns that had a half-life no different than the physical half-life of the isotope itself. Differential habitat use and competition most likely explains why both yearling and adult females consistently had higher body burdens than males over the 51-year time period, showing how dynamic this radioisotope is in biological systems. This study is one of the most robust long-term datasets in the world (n = 42,412) that is specifically focused on monitoring the uptake and depuration of ¹³⁷Cs in a wild species.

本文根据在51年内收集的数据，根据性别和年龄估算了居住在能源部萨凡纳河站点（SRS）处的白尾鹿的¹³⁷ Cs生态半衰期。鹿群的物理半衰期为30.2年，其生物半衰期要短得多，这是因为同位素在体内对K +进行了生化模拟。利用此长期数据集和可靠的样本量，我们将长期的半个世纪估计与较短的十年增量进行了比较。在整个51年的采样期内，简单的指数衰减模型预测的生态半衰期为23.15年。当将样本数据分解为十年增量时¹³⁷Cs的身体负担具有复杂的时间动态，预测的半衰期为9.25至32.33年。按性别，年龄，性别*年龄评估的模型在整个51年采样期间的指数衰减，以确定这些变量如何影响平均净化率的可预测性，所有排列的生态半衰期在21至23年之间，除了半衰期与同位素本身的物理半衰期没有区别的小鹿。不同的栖息地使用和竞争很可能解释了为什么一岁雌性和成年雌性在51年期间始终比男性具有更高的身体负担，这说明了放射性同位素在生物系统中的动态性。这项研究是世界上最强大的长期数据集之一（n = 42）野生物种中的¹³⁷ Cs。