engleski

Effects of climate change and wastewater effluent on aquatic macroinvertebrates: Insights from a mesocosm experiment

Freshwater ecosystems are impacted by complex chemical mixtures from multiple sources, including wastewater effluents. Additionally, climate change causes changes in, e.g., water temperatures due to long-term shifts in global weather. Freshwater biodiversity is particularly sensitive to such stressors. Moreover, stressors often interact, resulting in additive or interactive effects that are difficult to study and understand in terms of their impacts. Studies of the multiplicative effects of climate change, e.g., changing water temperatures, and chemical pollutants on freshwater biodiversity and their consequences are limited. Accordingly, the aim of the current study was to investigate the individual and combined effects of wastewater effluent and increased water temperature on model freshwater communities. A mesocosm experiment was conducted using a simplified freshwater food web containing non-vascular macrophytes (moss) and aquatic macroinvertebrates that feed as shredders and grazers. Samples were collected at the beginning and end of the experiment, whereas emerging animals were collected daily. Analyses such as total lipid content, metabolome and lipidome profiling were performed to evaluate the response of non-model aquatic macroinvertebrates to selected stressors at the molecular level. Our results demonstrate a species-specific response to selected stressors and their combination, as well as different modes of action of multiple stressors. Our study highlights the variability in the effects of both individual and multiple stressors on different traits and life stages of various macroinvertebrates in model communities.

Model communities ; Wastewater ; Climate changes ; Multiple stressors

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