Fish (Fundulus Heteroclitus) Populations With Different Exposure Histories Differ in Tolerance of Creosote-Contaminated Sediments

Abstract

Prior studies suggest that field-collected fish (Fundulus heteroclitus) from a creosote-contaminated Superfund site (Atlantic Wood Industries site, Elizabeth River, VA, USA) have enhanced tolerance to local, contaminated sediments. This study was designed to test whether other populations in the Elizabeth River at less contaminated sites also show similar tolerance and whether this tolerance is heritable. To test this, F. heteroclitus populations were sampled from four sites within the Elizabeth River with varying sediment polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations (3.9-264 ng PAH/g dry wt 10(3)) and one reference site in a nearby, uncontaminated estuary (York River, VA, USA; 0.27 ng PAH/g dry wt x 10(3)). Embryo assays were performed to quantify population differences in teratogenic effects during contaminated sediment exposure. Atlantic Wood sediment was mixed with reference sediment to achieve a range of sediment concentrations. Minimal differences were observed in teratogenic effects among fish taken from sites within the Elizabeth River; however, embryos of fish collected from a nearby, uncontaminated York River site and exposed to contaminated sediments had a significantly higher proportion of embryos with cardiac abnormalities than those from the Elizabeth River sites. Embryos from wild-caught and laboratory-reared Elizabeth River F. heteroclitus were simultaneously exposed to contaminated sediments, and no significant tolerance differences were found between embryos from fish taken directly from the field and those reared for a generation in the lab. Differences between fish populations from the two estuaries were larger than differences within the Elizabeth River, and these differences in tolerance were heritable.

Effects of acid mine drainage on the genetic diversity and structure of a natural population of Daphnia longispina

“…This could indicate that metal contamination acted as a directional selective pressure to change gene frequencies in the exposed population (site I) relative to the references, but this change in frequencies was not reflected by a loss of genetic diversity. These results are in agreement with some of the mentioned studies, which also found that the genetic differentiation between populations of fish (McMillan et al, 2006;Mulvey et al, 2002Mulvey et al, , 2003Roark et al, 2005) and wood-mouse (Berckmoes et al, 2005) was more correlated with environmental contamination than with geographical distance and that these changes reflected selection by contaminants (Ownby et al, 2002).…”

Development of resistance to cyfluthrin and naphthalene among Daphnia magna

“…Pyrethroid resistance observed in numerous insect species is often due to increased expression of P450 genes (Tomita et al 1995;Daborn et al 2001). PAH resistance due to biotransformation by P450 enzymes has been observed in numerous species including Hyalella azteca in response to fluoranthene contaminated sediment (Duan et al 2000) and killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) from creosote-contaminated sediment (Ownby et al 2002). Aside from P450's, Armknecht et al (1998) demonstrated that PAH resistant killifish had elevated levels of whole body glutathione S-transferase (GST) compared to non-resistant killifish.…”

Development of the morpholino gene knockdown technique in Fundulus heteroclitus: A tool for studying molecular mechanisms in an established environmental model

“…They are tolerant of significant changes in many environmental conditions, including salinity (Griffith, 1974;Wood and Marshall, 1994;Nordlie, 2006), pH (Gonzalez et al, 1989), temperature (Umminger, 1971;Dunson et al, 1993;Smith and Able, 1994;Nordlie, 2006), and oxygen (Wannamaker and Rice, 2000;Smith and Able, 2003;Stierhoff et al, 2003;Nordlie, 2006). Specific killifish populations have adapted to a variety of anthropogenic stressors, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) (Meyer et al, 2002;Ownby et al, 2002;Meyer and Di Giulio, 2003), 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) (Prince and Cooper, 1995a,b), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) (Nacci et al, 1999;Bello et al, 2001), and mercury (Weis et al, 1981). For these reasons, killifish have become one of the premier teleost environmental models, and certainly one of the most well-studied estuarine environmental models (Burnett et al, 2007).…”

“…Of the killifish populations known to have adapted to environmental contaminants, several have adapted specifically to chemicals that act via AhR-dependent mechanisms, and alterations to the AhR pathway seem to be a critical component of the adaptation (Prince and Cooper, 1995a,b;Nacci et al, 1999;Powell et al, 2000;Bello et al, 2001;Ownby et al, 2002;Bacanskas et al, 2004;Hahn et al, 2004). Specifically, all of these populations exhibit a marked reduction in CYP1A inducibility in response to a variety of AhR agonists (Prince and Cooper, 1995a;Elskus et al, 1999;Nacci et al, 1999;Bello et al, 2001;Arzuaga and Elskus, 2002;Meyer et al, 2002.…”