engleski

Transfer of environmental stress across ecosystems through emerging aquatic insects

Freshwater ecosystems are under anthropogenic stressors which can co-occur and interact in many ways. Moreover, these stressors cross ecosystem boundaries and propagate to adjacent terrestrial habitats. Emerging aquatic insects play a crucial role in these environments, transferring resources and energy, as well as subsidies to higher trophic levels in both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Accordingly, the aim of the current study was to investigate the single and combined effects of emerging contaminants (ECs) ; pharmaceuticals (PhACs) and endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) and elevated water temperature (as a proxy for climate change effects) on aquatic insects at the aquatic-terrestrial habitat linkage. A laboratory (microcosm) experiment was conducted with a simplified freshwater food web containing nonvascular macrophytes and Trichoptera larvae feeding mainly as shredders. Sampling included initial sampling and several consecutive collections including both, aquatic and terrestrial life stages (larvae, pupae and adult stage). Analyses enabling assessment of the response of non-model aquatic insects to the selected stressors at molecular level are being conducted, such as metabolite profiling, total protein content, total lipid content and fatty acids composition. As expected, increased water temperature caused earlier emergence of male and female adults, however, there were no changes in sex ratios due to exposure to EDCs. Furthermore, negative correlation between body weight and protein concentration was observed in larvae and pupae in treatments with ECs mixture, irrespective of the water temperature. The current study will provide important insights on propagation of in-stream environmental stress across ecosystem boundaries through emerging aquatic insects.

Multiple stressors ; Climate change ; Emerging contaminants

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