Comparative effects of lindane and deltamethrin on mortality, growth, and cellulase activity in earthworms (Eisenia fetida)

Abstract

Laboratory tests were conducted to compare the effects of various concentrations of lindane and deltamethrin on mature earthworms (Eisenia fetida) cultured in artificial soil during typical acute (14d) and subchronic (42d) exposure periods. The effects of the two pesticides on earthworm mortality, growth inhibition, and cellulase activity were determined for different exposure durations. The toxicity order for earthworm mortality from the 14-day exposure was lindane > deltamethrin, with median lethal concentrations (LC 50 ) of 162.1 and 432.9 mg kg À1 , respectively. Earthworms exposed to deltamethrin showed dose-dependent toxic effects on growth and cellulase activity only from the acute exposures, whereas lindane's effects on these activities were seen correlated with both the acute and subchronic doses. Also, changes in biomass and cellulase activity during the subchronic exposure period appear to be a more sensitive parameter than the LC 50 value in assessing pesticidal injury.

Growth Inhibition and Altered Gene Transcript Levels in Earthworms (Eisenia fetida) Exposed to 2,2′,4,4′-Tetrabromodiphenyl Ether

“…Within meeting the conditions of the normality assumption and the homogeneity of variances, which were tested, respectively, by Shapiro-Wilk test and Levene's test, and data for growth-inhibition and gene transcript levels were each subjected to one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) using Fisher's least significant difference test for contrast of the differences among treatment means (Shi et al 2007). Logarithmic transformation was applied to the dependent variables in gene transcript level analysis.…”

“…where GIRn is the growth-inhibition rate for dose group n; SGRn is the somatic growth rate for dose group n from day i to j; W 0 is the weight on day 0; W i is the weight on day i and W j is the weight after j days of exposure (Shi et al 2007;OECD 2006).…”

“…Earthworm (E. fetida) is an attractive biological model because it is available commercially, easy to handle, susceptible to chemicals, and can be bred readily in a wide range of organic waste materials (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 1984). Mortality and growth inhibition of earthworms (E. fetida) have been verified as effective indicators in a variety of reports (Shi et al 2007;Wu et al 2011;Xie et al 2011). As a sensitive indicator, gene transcript level has been used in assessing toxic effects of toxicants to earthworms (E. fetida) (Asensio et al 2007;Brulle et al 2007Brulle et al , 2008Zheng et al 2008).…”

Survival, growth, detoxifying and antioxidative responses of earthworms (Eisenia fetida) exposed to soils with industrial DDT contamination

“…There is ample evidence showing that earthworms died and their growth was inhibited by exposure to pesticides such as lindane, deltamethrin and chlorpyrifos etc. [13,31,32].…”

“…Biomarkers for assessing the toxicity of chemicals on earthworms such as the survival, growth and reproduction are reliable, however, a great portion of these have been tested in simplified paper contact or artificial soils [8][9][10][11][12][13] and may lack ecological significance; so that it is essential to conduct tests with contaminated natural soils to allow the laboratory data to be interpreted and extrapolated to the contaminated field.…”