Effects of Glyphosate-Based and Derived Products on Sea Urchin Larval Development

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of herbicide glyphosate in cultivation, its extensive runoff into rivers and to coastal areas, and the persistence of this chemical and its main degradation product (aminomethylphosphonic acid, AMPA) in the environment, there is still little information on the potential negative effects of glyphosate, its commercial formulation Roundup® and AMPA on marine species. This study was conducted with the aim of providing a comparative evaluation of the effects of glyphosate-based and its derived chemicals on the larval development of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus, thus providing new data to describe the potential ecotoxicity of these contaminants. In particular, the effects on larval development, growth and metabolism were assessed during 48 h of exposure from the time of egg fertilization. The results confirm that AMPA and its parent compound, glyphosate have similar toxicity, as observed in other marine invertebrates. However, interestingly, the Roundup® formulation seemed to be less toxic than the glyphosate alone.

Assessment of the environmental acceptability of potential artificial reef materials using two ecotoxicity tests: Luminescent bacteria and sea urchin embryogenesis

“…These kind of effects (i.e. lack of skeleton, not four legs development and leg to short) have been previously reported in the literature as the consequence of nickel (100 μg/l), lead (500 μg/l), zinc (14-58 μg/l) or copper (128 μg/l) concentration in seawater (Fichet and Miramand, 1998;Fernández and Beiras, 2001;Kobayashi and Okamura, 2004;Camacho et al, 2018) or in different vanadium concentrations (Chiarelli et al, 2021) or glyphosate-based herbicides (100 μg/l) (Asnicar et al, 2020).…”

Including the bioconcentration of pesticide metabolites in plant uptake modeling

“…Due to a lack of knowledge on AMPA's toxicity in humans, [52][53][54] AMPA is assigned a RPF M,i,oral value of 1 because its toxicity prole and mechanism of action are thought to be comparable to those of glyphosate. The ESI le † contains the complete equations of C P,tuber (t) and C M,i,tuber (t), as well as the model input data.…”

“…Thus, the non-metabolite model agreed with the metabolite model in forecasting the glyphosate concentration in the potato at harvest, as demonstrated by recent modeling studies on various pesticides. [38][39][40] As the major metabolite of glyphosate (i.e., AMPA) in the potato could have hazardous effects on human health, [52][53][54] the uptake process of AMPA in the potato must be incorporated into the non-metabolite model. AMPA concentrations in global soil reveal the potential toxicity of AMPA in potatoes, 42 The potential risk of AMPA to consumers depends on both its quantity (in terms of the residue bioconcentration potential in plants) and the toxicity (in terms of chemical-intrinsic hazard properties).…”

Potential Effects of Persistent Organic Contaminants on Marine Biota: A Review on Recent Research

“…The wide variety of effects observed in non-target species exposed to pesticides include detrimental impacts to biota with photosynthetic symbionts (e.g., marine microalgae Rhodomonas salina [178], diatoms Phaeodactylum tricornutum [179] and Chaetoceros muelleri [180], tropical marine cnidarian, sea anemones Exaiptasia pallida and symbiotic zooxanthellae microalga Symbiodinium spp. [181], Cassiopea maremetens medusae [182]), but also disruptions to non-photosynthetic animals such as reduced growth and reproduction rates of invertebrates (e.g., sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus [183]) and vertebrates (Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas [184] and Sheepshead minnow Cyprinodon variegatus [185]), disruptions of nerve impulses which can ultimately lead to paralysis and death of invertebrates, and several sub-lethal effects on physiological or metabolic endpoints that are usually measured during the exposure treatments and provide unambiguous information about responses to pesticide exposure [175,186,187].…”