engleski

Emerging Aquatic Insects Transfer Environmental Stress Across Ecosystems

Nowadays, freshwater ecosystems are contaminated with various pollutants, which can co-occur and interact in many ways, cross ecosystem boundaries and propagate to adjacent terrestrial habitats. Moreover, these ecosystems are subjected to climate change which can impair their normal functions and balance, e.g. changing water temperature. 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 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 and several consecutive collections including all life stages (larvae, pupae and adult stage). Analyses such as total protein content, total lipid content, metabolite profiling and fatty acids composition are being conducted in order to evaluate the response of non-model aquatic insects to selected stressors at molecular level. Increased water temperature had an impact on phenology causing earlier emergence of adults and a decrease in lipid mass. Furthermore, treatments with ECs mixture lowered the protein mass in larvae and pupae, irrespective of the water temperature. Multiple stressor effect was noticed in treatments with combined ECs and elevated water temperature as the highest decrease in total protein content in larvae and pupae and total lipid content in adults.

Climate change ; Emerging contaminants ; Trichoptera ; Multiple stressors

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