Temporal and spatial toxicogenetic damage in estuarine catfish Cathorops spixii from a marine protected area with evidence of anthropogenic influences

Histopathological Changes in Estuarine Catfish: A Temporal Approach in a Marine Protected Area

“…The fish of the Ariidae family, namely Cathorops spixii (C. spixii) and Genidens genidens (G. genidens), have been used as bioindicators of contamination in several studies in recent years [2,6,9,10,11,12]. The works involving these fish conduct analyses of biochemical biomarkers; tissue lesions in different tissues, such as gills and livers [6]; genotoxicity biomarkers [3]; and bioaccumulation of metals in the muscles [13].…”

“…The anomalies normally occur in anthropized environments close to urban centers and industrial activities, and contamination at different levels takes the form, in general, of substances from pesticides, fertilizers [6], minerals, and oil products [13]. Studies demonstrate that the use of these fish as bioindicator species has been effective in quantitative and qualitative analyses; thus, these fish are appropriate bioindicators of environmental quality [3,4,9,12,13]. C. spixii (Agassiz 1829) and G. genidens (Valenciennes 1839) show a wide distribution on the Brazilian coast in places such as estuaries and estuarine lagoons, usually occurring in bays with a biogenic bottom and low depths [14,15].…”

“…This study was carried out within the scope of the environmental monitoring and diagnosis research project entitled "Impact of xenobiotics on the estuarine teleost metabolism", which has been carried out since 2004 with bioindicator catfish in the CIELC [4,8,9,11,12,19,20,21,22] 1) and analyzed regarding pathological changes in the hepatic tissue of the fish. The sampling sites were properly georeferenced using a GPS device (vessel).…”

Analysis of the 90º and 150º angles for increment counting in otoliths of estuarine catfish

“…Morais and Azevedo Amaral et al, 2021), an aquatic ecosystem subject to minimal anthropogenic influence (Meniconi, 2012), but under the influence of human-made materials coming from the Ribeira de Iguape region, located mainly in the northern region of the CIELC (Schmidt et al, 2008;Souza et al, 2012;Mahiques et al, 2013;Amaral et al, 2021).…”

“…Despite the scarcity of more current data, Mishima and Tanji (1981) considered that C. spixii and G. genidens have a complete life cycle in the CIELC (25°00'28.27S/47°56'01.89W). G. genidens are found in greater number in further northern areas of this system, where there are major continental and anthropic influences, mainly by the Ribeira de Iguape fluvial inputs (Prado et al, 2019), and where salinity ranges from 0 to 16 (Barcellos et al, 2005;Pecoraro et al, 2018;Amaral et al, 2021). Conversely, C. spixii is distributed throughout the estuary, but more abundantly in its southern region (Mishima and Tanji, 1981), where marine influxes are more accentuated (Chiozzini et al, 2010;Aguiar et al, 2013).…”