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Diagnosis of potential stressors adversely affecting benthic invertebrate communities in Greenwich Bay, Rhode Island, USA.

ABSTRACT: Greenwich Bay is an urbanized embayment of Narragansett Bay potentially impacted by multiple stressors. The present study identified the important stressors affecting Greenwich Bay benthic fauna. First, existing data and information were used to confirm that the waterbody was impaired. Second, the presence of source, stressor, and effect were established. Then linkages between source, stressor, and effect were developed. This allows identification of probable stressors adversely affecting the waterbody. Three pollutant categories were assessed: chemicals, nutrients, and suspended sediments. This weight of evidence approach indicated that Greenwich Bay was primarily impacted by eutrophication-related stressors. The sediments of Greenwich Bay were carbon enriched and low dissolved oxygen concentrations were commonly seen, especially in the western portions of Greenwich Bay. The benthic community was depauperate, as would be expected under oxygen stress. Although our analysis indicated that contaminant loads in Greenwich Bay were at concentrations where adverse effects might be expected, no toxicity was observed, as a result of high levels of organic carbon in these sediments reducing contaminant bioavailability. Our analysis also indicated that suspended sediment impacts were likely nonexistent for much of the Bay. This analysis demonstrates that the diagnostic procedure was useful to organize and assess the potential stressors impacting the ecological well-being of Greenwich Bay. This diagnostic procedure is useful for management of waterbodies impacted by multiple stressors. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:449-462. © 2016 SETAC.

SUBMITTER: Pelletier M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6112154 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Diagnosis of potential stressors adversely affecting benthic invertebrate communities in Greenwich Bay, Rhode Island, USA.

Pelletier Marguerite M Ho Kay K Cantwell Mark M Perron Monique M Rocha Kenneth K Burgess Robert M RM Johnson Roxanne R Perez Kenneth K Cardin John J Charpentier Michael A MA

Environmental toxicology and chemistry 20160812 2

Greenwich Bay is an urbanized embayment of Narragansett Bay potentially impacted by multiple stressors. The present study identified the important stressors affecting Greenwich Bay benthic fauna. First, existing data and information were used to confirm that the waterbody was impaired. Second, the presence of source, stressor, and effect were established. Then linkages between source, stressor, and effect were developed. This allows identification of probable stressors adversely affecting the wa ...[more]

PMID: 27442751

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Project description:The behavior and fate of pharmaceutical ingredients in coastal marine ecosystems are not well understood. To address this, the spatial and temporal distribution of 15 high-volume pharmaceuticals were measured over a 1-yr period in Narragansett Bay (RI, USA) to elucidate factors and processes regulating their concentration and distribution. Dissolved concentrations ranged from below detection to 313?ng/L, with 4 pharmaceuticals present at all sites and sampling periods. Eight pharmaceuticals were present in suspended particulate material, ranging in concentration from below detection to 44?ng/g. Partitioning coefficients were determined for some pharmaceuticals, with their range and variability remaining relatively constant throughout the study. Normalization to organic carbon content provided no benefit, indicating other factors played a greater role in regulating partitioning behavior. Within the upper bay, the continuous influx of wastewater treatment plant effluents resulted in sustained, elevated levels of pharmaceuticals. A pharmaceutical concentration gradient was apparent from this zone to the mouth of the bay. For most of the pharmaceuticals, there was a strong relationship with salinity, indicating conservative behavior within the estuary. Short flushing times in Narragansett Bay coupled with pharmaceuticals' presence overwhelmingly in the dissolved phase indicate that most pharmaceuticals will be diluted and transported out of the estuary, with only trace amounts of several compounds sequestered in sediments. The present study identifies factors controlling the temporal and spatial dynamics of dissolved and particulate pharmaceuticals; their partitioning behavior provides an increased understanding of their fate, including bioavailability in an urban estuary. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:1846-1855. Published 2016 Wiley Periodicals Inc. on behalf of SETAC. This article is a US government work and, as such, is in the public domain in the United States of America.

Project description:BackgroundFreshwater ecosystems, such as streams, are facing increasing pressures from agricultural land use and recent literature stresses the importance of robust biomonitoring to detect trends in insect decline globally. Aquatic insects and other macroinvertebrates are often used as indicators of ecological condition in freshwater biomonitoring programs; however, these diverse groups can present challenges to morphological identification and coarse-level taxonomic resolution can mask patterns in community composition. Here, we incorporate molecular identification (DNA metabarcoding) into a stream biomonitoring sampling design to explore the diversity and variability of aquatic macroinvertebrate communities at small spatial scales. While individual stream reaches can be very heterogenous, most community ecology studies focus on larger, landscape-level patterns of community composition. A high degree of community variability at the local scale has important implications for both biomonitoring and ecological research, and the incorporation of DNA metabarcoding into local biodiversity assessments will inform future sampling protocols.ResultsWe sampled twenty streams in southern Ontario, Canada, for aquatic macroinvertebrates across multiple time points and assessed local community variability by comparing field replicates taken ten meters apart within the same stream. Using bulk-tissue DNA metabarcoding, we revealed that aquatic macroinvertebrate communities are highly diverse at small spatial scales with unprecedented levels of local taxonomic turnover. We detected over 1600 Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) from 149 families, and a single insect family, the Chironomidae, contained over one third of the total number of OTUs detected in our study. Benthic communities were largely comprised of rare taxa detected only once per stream despite multiple biological replicates (24-94% rare taxa per site). In addition to numerous rare taxa, our species pool estimates indicated that there was a large proportion of taxa that remained undetected by our sampling regime (14-94% per site). Our sites were located across a gradient of agricultural activity, and while we predicted that increased land use would homogenize benthic communities, this was not supported as within-stream dissimilarity was unrelated to land use. Within-stream dissimilarity estimates were consistently high for all levels of taxonomic resolution (invertebrate families, invertebrate OTUs, chironomid OTUs), indicating stream communities are very dissimilar at small spatial scales.

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Diagnosis of potential stressors adversely affecting benthic invertebrate communities in Greenwich Bay, Rhode Island, USA.

Publications

Diagnosis of potential stressors adversely affecting benthic invertebrate communities in Greenwich Bay, Rhode Island, USA.

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