Crustaceana 86 (7-8) 780-801
Proceedings MEB Amphipoda, Palermo 2011 SEDIMENT QUALITY ASSESSMENT USING GMELINOIDES FASCIATUS AND MONOPOREIA AFFINIS (AMPHIPODA, GAMMARIDEA) IN THE NORTHEASTERN BALTIC SEA BY NADEZHDA A. BEREZINA1,5 ), EVITA STRODE2 ), KARI K. LEHTONEN3 ), MAIJA BALODE2,4 ) and SERGEY M. GOLUBKOV1 ) 1 ) Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, University Embankment 1, RU-199034 St Petersburg, Russia 2 ) Department of Hydrobiology, Faculty of Biology, University of Latvia, Kronvalda Boulevard 4, LV-1586 Riga, Latvia 3 ) Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, Marine Research Centre, P.O. Box 140, FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland 4 ) Latvian Institute of Aquatic Ecology, Daugavgr¯ıvas Street 8, LV-1048 Riga, Latvia
ABSTRACT Crustaceans in the order Amphipoda are sensitive organisms for the assessment of sediment quality. In this work we performed 10-day toxicity tests on muddy sediments collected from a total of 29 sites in the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Gulf of Bothnia (northeastern Baltic Sea) using Baltic Sea species such as the native amphipod Monoporeia affinis (Bousfield, 1989) and the invasive amphipod Gmelinoides fasciatus (Stebbing, 1899), and also compared these results with those of bioassays carried out using the standard test species, laboratory-cultivated amphipod Hyalella azteca (Saussure, 1858). The sediment samples (three cm of the upper layer) were collected by a GEMAX Dual Corer during the R/V “Aranda” cruises in August and September of 2009 and 2010. Toxicity of sediments in bioassays with M. affinis and G. fasciatus gave varied results depending on the amphipod species used. The lowest quality of sediments determined using M. affinis was recorded at sites located in the offshore and deepwater areas (60-100 m depths) of the Gulf of Finland characterized by hypoxic/anoxic conditions. Toxicity testing applying G. fasciatus showed that sediments at >50% of the study sites in the Gulf of Finland and in the Gulf of Riga can be assessed as highly contaminated. Males of G. fasciatus were significantly more sensitive to potential contamination in sediments than females. The lower survival of males under contaminant stress may result in a skewed sex ratio in natural populations and in a decline of reproduction success. The survival rate of G. fasciatus in the toxicity tests correlated positively with the Shannon diversity index (calculated for macrozoobenthos at the study sites), weight losses on ignition (%) in sediments, and it also showed a negative relation with the bottom water oxygen content (mg/l). The results suggest that G. fasciatus is the more sensitive species of the three amphipods tested and can be used as a indicator of sediment quality in the Baltic Sea and other water bodies.
5 ) Corresponding author; e-mail:
[email protected]
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013
DOI:10.1163/15685403-00003215
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RIASSUNTO I crostacei anfipodi sono organismi particolarmente sensibili nella valutazione della qualità dei sedimenti. In questo lavoro sono stati effettuati test di tossicità su sedimenti fangosi raccolti da 29 siti nel Golfo di Finlandia, Golfo di Riga e Golfo di Bothnia (a nord-est del Mar Baltico), utilizzando come specie rappresentative l’anfipode nativo Monoporeia affinis (Bousfield, 1989) e l’invasivo Gmelinoides fasciatus (Stebbing, 1899), e confrontando i dati con i test standard condotti con l’anfipode Hyalella azteca (Saussure, 1858) coltivato in laboratorio. I campioni di sedimento (tre cm di strato superiore) sono stati raccolti da un GEMAX Dual Corer nel corso della crociera R/V “Aranda” in agosto e settembre del 2009 e 2010. La tossicità dei sedimenti nei test biologici con M. affinis e G. fasciatus ha dato risultati diversi a seconda della specie di anfipode utilizzata. La peggiore qualità dei sedimenti, determinata utilizzando M. affinis, è stata riscontrata in siti ubicati offshore e nelle aree di acque profonde (60-100 m di profondità) del Golfo di Finlandia, caratterizzate da condizioni di ipossia/anossia. I test di tossicità che hanno utilizzato G. fasciatus hanno dimostrato che i sedimenti di gran parte dei siti del Golfo di Finlandia e del Golfo di Riga possono essere valutati come altamente contaminati. I maschi di G. fasciatus si sono mostrati significativamente più sensibili ad una potenziale contaminazione dei sedimenti rispetto le femmine. La minore capacità di sopravvivenza dei maschi in condizioni di stress può essere il risultato di una sex ratio unbiased nelle popolazioni naturali e di un calo del successo riproduttivo. Il tasso di sopravvivenza di G. fasciatus nei test di tossicità è stato correlato positivamente con l’indice di diversità Shannon (calcolato per il macrozoobenthos nei siti di studio), la perdita di contenuto organico (%) nei sedimenti, ed è stato anche mostrato un rapporto negativo con il contenuto di ossigeno (mg/l). I risultati suggeriscono che G. fasciatus è la specie più sensibile delle tre e può essere utilizzata come indicatore di qualità dei sedimenti nel Mar Baltico e altri corpi idrici.
INTRODUCTION
Amphipods are often selected as test organisms in different environmental studies because of their widespread distribution, high significance in food webs, sensitivity to disturbance and suitability for culturing. They are common members of benthic communities and often the first taxa to decline in abundance or completely disappear in contaminated areas or under hypoxia (Bellan-Santini, 1980; Bat, 2005). Historically, the evaluation of contaminant effects has been more focused on surface waters compared to sediments, and a tentative procedure for undertaking amphipod bioassays using freshwater amphipods first appeared in 1976 (Standard methods for the examination of water and wastewater, 1976). Assessment of sediment toxicity using benthic invertebrates as test organisms developed very slowly and there were no standard methods for conducting the tests until the early 1990s (Chapman, 1989). A completely standardized methodology has been published by Luoma & Ho (1993). A variety of test methods have been developed by the American Public Health Association (APHA), the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and OECD (Guidelines for the testing of chemicals), among others. Benthic amphipods are highly relevant organisms for sediment toxicity tests in estuarine and marine areas (Reynoldson & Day, 1993), because they are
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intimately associated with sediments, either through their burrowing activity or by ingestion of sediment particles (Bat, 2005). One of the first bioassays for testing the toxicity of dredged material confirmed the high sensitivity of the infaunal amphipod Paraphoxus epistomus (Shoemaker, 1938) compared to other infaunal non-amphipod species (Swartz et al., 1979). Many amphipods, such as Corophium salmonis Stimpson, 1857, C. spinicorne Stimpson, 1857, Gammarus fasciatus Say, 1818, G. pulex (Linnaeus, 1758), G. lacustris (Sars, 1863), Crangonyx gracillus Smith, 1871 and Pontoporeia hoyi Smith, 1874, have been used in or recommended for bioassays in regard to sediments contaminated with heavy metals (Arthur, 1980; Burton, 1991; Bat, 2005). Nowadays amphipods are widely used in different countries, most typically in 10-day laboratory survival tests on whole sediment toxicity (Nipper et al., 1989; American Society for Testing and Materials, 1998; Matthiessen, 2000). In the Baltic Sea, where hypoxia and toxic pollution are among the major factors responsible for the observed decline in habitat quality, still little is known about the effects of environmental pollutants on biological traits of crustaceans (Breitholtz et al., 2001). Linden (1976) studied the effects of different oil types on the amphipod Gammarus oceanicus Segerstråle, 1947. During acute exposure, juveniles of this species were found to be several hundred times more sensitive to oil exposure compared to adults, which, in turn, expressed sublethal effects such as impaired swimming performance, decreased pre-copulation frequency and impaired reaction to light. During chronic exposure to crude oil, decreased growth was found among the juveniles. Research on the effects of hazardous substances on biological endpoints in Baltic Sea amphipods (mainly for Monoporeia affinis (Bousfield, 1989) and Pontoporeia femorata Krøyer, 1842) has been conducted during the past decades (Sundelin & Eriksson, 1998; Gorokhova et al., 2010). For example, high frequencies of malformations were found in developing embryos of M. affinis from the vicinity of an aluminum smelter and pulp mills in the northern Baltic Proper and the Bothnian Sea (Sundelin & Eriksson, 1998). This study primarily focuses on two questions: (1) can bioassays using the Baltic Sea sediment-dwelling amphipod species be responsive and suitable tools for primary indication of sediment quality in coastal and open areas of the Baltic Sea?; and (2) which of the used amphipod species are most sensitive to contaminated sediments and could be recommended for sediment toxicity testing? Survival of amphipods was studied in acute tests with sediments collected in different areas of the northeastern Baltic Sea (Gulf of Finland, Gulf of Bothnia and Gulf of Riga) chronically exposed to various human perturbations in different degrees. The bioassays were performed using species from the Baltic Sea, the introduced Baikalian amphipod Gmelinoides fasciatus (Stebbing, 1899) and the
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“glacial relict” M. affinis and, for comparison, the cultured species Hyalella azteca (Saussure, 1858). In part of the studies on G. fasciatus the survival of males and females was studied separately.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
Test species Gmelinoides fasciatus was intentionally introduced from Lake Baikal to the Baltic Sea region (Karelian Isthmus) in the 1970s and it expanded its distribution from freshwater habitats to the low-salinity (up to 2) eastern Gulf of Finland by 1990s. By the end of 1990s it became the keystone species (>40% of biomass), inhabiting different types of sediments on the open coasts of the eastern Gulf of Finland and estuaries of the Neva, Luga and Narva rivers in the salinity range from 0 to 2 (Berezina et al., 2001). The main environmental barriers for the distribution of G. fasciatus include hypoxia in the water and sediments (
