engleski

Effects of Climate Change and Emerging Contaminants on Caddisflies: Insights from a Multiple Stress Experiment

Freshwater biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and services are changing at an unprecedented rate due to the impacts of vast number of stressors overlapping in time and space (e.g., habitat alterations, pollution, climate change). Ecological impacts of emerging contaminants (ECs) such as pharmaceuticals (PhACs) and endocrine disruptors (EDCs) on freshwater ecosystems are not fully understood due to a large number of compounds present in the environment, as well as complexity of these ecosystems. Warming related to climate change can increase the toxicity of some chemicals in water making them more dangerous. Thus, such a combination of stressors may have ecological impacts on aquatic organisms like freshwater insects, which perform important ecological functions linking the freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. Our study aimed at characterizing effects of individual and combined stressors such as pollution with PhACs and EDCs and increased water temperature on first level consumers (shredding aquatic insects) in freshwaters. We conducted the microcosm experiment with a simplified freshwater food web containing moss (Bryophyta) and a shredding caddisfly larvae of Micropterna nycterobia (Trichoptera). The experiment was conducted in the randomized factorial design, with four treatments: control (C), increased water temperature +4 °C (T2), ECs mix (EC), and multiple stressor treatment (MS = EC + T2). The ECs mix was composed of 15 PhACs and 5 EDCs belonging to different classes, and concentration of each compound was kept at 500 ng/L. Negative effect of increased water temperature on development of M. nycterobia was observed as decrease in body weight of larvae and earlier emergence of adults. The lipidome of M. nycterobia adults was also mainly affected by the temperature increase in both males and females. However, the presence of PhACs and EDCs in water had higher impact on metabolism of aquatic life stages of M. nycterobia than water temperature increase. Multiple stressor effect was recorded in M. nycterobia adults, both in metabolic response, and as a decrease in total lipid content. Thus, combined effects of increased water temperature and presence of PhACs and EDCs in water negatively impact population dynamics of aquatic insects, but they also indicate a reduction in biomass and resource quality for both, aquatic and terrestrial food webs.

Trichoptera ; Multiple stressors ; Emerging contaminants ; Climate change

nije evidentirano