engleski

Into the freshwaters and back: transfer of emerging contaminants through the aquatic-terrestrial habitat linkage

Understanding of bioaccumulation and biomagnification of emerging contaminants (ECs) such as pharmaceuticals (PhACs), endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) and antibiotics in aquatic food webs are incomplete. Furthermore, up to date there are only few studies on transfer of ECs to terrestrial ecosystems through the vital aquatic-terrestrial habitat linkage. Accordingly, the aim of the current study was to provide novel insights into bioaccumulation of ECs in freshwaters, as well as aquatic-terrestrial food web coupling. These were approached by combining field based research (in situ) and the laboratory (mesocosm) experiment using aquatic macrophytes, different life stages of aquatic insects and riparian spiders. The mesocosm experiment conducted with the mixture of 4 PhACs and 2 EDCs provided a direct evidence of bioaccumulated ECs transfer from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems through emerging adult insects. This was further supported by the results of in situcollections, where emerging insects (adult Trichoptera and Odonata) and riparian spiders had 5 different PhACs, 2 antibiotics and 11 EDCs bioaccumulated in their tissues. The results of both, in situ collections and mesocosm experiments, provided first insight into variability of patterns of ECs bioaccumulation in respect to compounds, taxa and life stages, highlighting the need of more taxon-and trait-specific evaluation of bioaccumulation and biomagnification scenarios.

bioaccumulation ; biomagnification ; emerging contaminants ; freshwater-terrestrial ecosystem coupling

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