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1. Stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen are increasingly used in studies of animal diet reconstruction via mixing models. However, isotope ratios of both consumer and source tissues can be altered by various amounts of lipids, potentially leading to biased estimates of diet composition when they are not taken into account.

2. We investigated the consequences of lipid correction on the estimation of diet composition with mixing models. Using empirical data from three northern terrestrial trophic systems, we illustrated the direct effects of lipid extraction (LE) on the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N of source and consumer tissues and its ultimate effects on the reconstruction of the consumer’s diet.

3. In parallel, we developed a simulation tool in R, called fatsim, to assess sensitivity of mixing models to variation in isotopic ratios of samples from source or consumer tissues. This tool can be used to assess the effect of shifts in isotopic …