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Comparing impacts of metal contamination on macroinvertebrate and fish assemblages in a northern Japanese river
- Source :
- PeerJ
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- PeerJ, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Researchers have long assessed the ecological impacts of metals in running waters, but few such studies investigated multiple biological groups. Our goals in this study were to assess the ecological impacts of metal contamination on macroinvertebrates and fishes in a northern Japanese river receiving treated mine discharge and to evaluate whether there was any difference between the metrics based on macroinvertebrates and those based on fishes in assessing these impacts. Macroinvertebrate communities and fish populations were little affected at the downstream contaminated sites where concentrations of Cu, Zn, Pb, and Cd were 0.1–1.5 times higher than water-quality criteria established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We detected a significant reduction in a few macroinvertebrate metrics such as mayfly abundance and the abundance of heptageniid mayflies at the two most upstream contaminated sites with metal concentrations 0.8–3.7 times higher than the water-quality criteria. There were, however, no remarkable effects on the abundance or condition factor of the four dominant fishes, including masu salmon (Oncorhynchus masou). These results suggest that the richness and abundance of macroinvertebrates are more sensitive to metal contamination than abundance and condition factor of fishes in the studied river. Because the sensitivity to metal contamination can depend on the biological metrics used, and fish-based metrics in this study were limited, it would be valuable to accumulate empirical evidence for ecological indicators sensitive to metal contamination within and among biological groups to help in choosing which groups to survey for general environmental impact assessments in metal-contaminated rivers.
- Subjects :
- Environmental Impacts
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Abandoned mines
010501 environmental sciences
Ecotoxicology
Freshwater Biology
01 natural sciences
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Mayfly
Trace metals
Abundance (ecology)
Environmental impact assessment
Ecological risk assessment
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Invertebrate
Ecology
biology
Environmental assessment
Legacy mines
General Neuroscience
Metal pollution
Salmonids
General Medicine
Cross taxon congruence
Contamination
biology.organism_classification
Ecological indicator
Fish
Aquatic insects
Oncorhynchus
Environmental science
Species richness
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Environmental Contamination and Remediation
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 21678359
- Volume :
- 9
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PeerJ
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....8716d94a33e05250513244480a027f0f