Optical diagnostic test of stress conditions of aquatic organisms

Global climate change has become a dire reality and its impact is expected to rise dramatically in the near future. Combined with the day-to-day human activities the climatic changes heavily affect the environment. In particular, a global temperature increase accompanied by a number of anthropogenic chemicals falling within the freshwater ecosystem results in a dramatic enhancement of the overall stress for most aquatic organisms. This leads to a significant shift in the species inventory and potential breakdown of the water ecosystem with severe consequences for local economies and water supply. In order to understand and predict the influence of climatic changes on the physiological and biochemical processes that take place in living aquatic organisms we explore the application of optical spectroscopy for monitoring and quantitative assessment of antioxidant enzymes activity in benthic amphipods of Lake Baikal. We demonstrate that the changes of the enzymes activity in Baikal amphipods undergoing thermal and/or hypoxia stress can be observed and documented by UV and optical spectroscopy both in vivo and in vitro. (© 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)