The three‐spined stickleback as an environmental sentinel: effects of stressors on whole‐body physiological indices

Abstract

15394-46914 2 Indicators of a generalised stress response (changes in cortisol, glucose, RNA:DNA ratio and total protein) when measured in whole-body preparations of individual sticklebacks display significant alterations in response to acute (hours) and chronic (days) disturbances and food withdrawal. In addition, changes in alkali-labile phosphorous, a specific biomarker of exposure to estrogenic contaminants, can be detected in whole-body preparations of estrogen-exposed sticklebacks confirming that the measurement of biomarkers normally assessed in a specific tissue can be equally possible in whole fish.

The effects of acute and chronic hypoxia on cortisol, glucose and lactate concentrations in different populations of three-spined stickleback

“…Therefore, it could be suggested that absence of a difference in WB cortisol between control fish and those subjected to acute hypoxia was the result of fish entering 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 the experiment in a state of chronic stress. However, this seems unlikely as the WB cortisol levels of the fish in the current study were similar to those reported for the control fish (<8 ng/g) in a previous study (Pottinger et al, 2002) of the effect of various stressors on WB cortisol in three-spined sticklebacks. In this earlier study chronically stressed fish had WB cortisol levels of up to 50 ng/g after four days of crowding and confinement.…”

“…Future studies should sample fish from a larger number of lentic and lotic stickleback populations and acquire more comprehensive water quality data with which to characterise the habitat of each population. Furthermore, although indices such as WB cortisol and glucose have been shown to be effective in measuring the acute and chronic stress response of a variety of small fishes, including sticklebacks (Reubush and Heath 1996;Scarabello et al 1992;King and Berlinsky 2006;Pottinger et al 2002) these are relatively crude measures of a complex biological response. Future investigations may benefit from a more refined approach to the assessment of HPI activity, including repeat measures in individual fish by the collection of water-borne cortisol and quantification of transcription factors such as hypoxia inducible factor-1, that are known to be associated with regulating the expression of physiologically relevant genes (Terova et al 2008).…”

“…The homogenate was centrifuged (13,000 RPM) at 5ºC for ten minutes and all assays were performed on the resultant supernatant. Cortisol immunoreactivity was determined in ethyl acetate extracts from the supernatant by radioimmunoassay as previously described by Pottinger et al (2002). Recovery of cortisol from the extracts was >95%.…”

Biomarker responses in wild three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus L.) as a useful tool for freshwater biomonitoring: A multiparametric approach

“…For all fish, the condition factor (CF) was calculated according to Pottinger et al (2002), while somatic indexes for liver and gonad (HSI and GSI respectively) were calculated as (organ weight / fish weight).100.…”

“…This androgen-induced glue protein is synthetised by the kidney (Jakobsson et al, 1999). In environmental toxicology, stickleback is also considered as a valuable model species that enable the measurement of both biochemical and physiological responses to pollutants such as metals (Sanchez et al, 2005), pesticides (Katsiadaki et al, 2006;Sanchez et al, 2006;Wogram et al, 2001), halogenated organic compounds (Holm et al, 1994) and steroids (Pottinger et al, 2002;Sebire et al, 2007). Stickleback biomarker responses can also be used for the biomonitoring of freshwater ecosystem contamination as previously described for cholinesterase activities (Sturm et al, 2000) and liver histology (Handy et al, 2002).…”