Journal
ECOTOXICOLOGY
Volume 22, Issue 5, Pages 779-794Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10646-013-1068-7
Keywords
Phytoplankton; Community ecology; Phenotypic evolution; Trait-based approach; Micropollutants; Mesocosms
Categories
Funding
- NIVA
- Eawag
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We exposed replicated phytoplankton communities confined in semi-permeable membrane-based mesocosms to 0, 0.1, 1 and 10 mu g L-1 triclosan (TCS) and placed them back in their original environment to investigate the occurrence of trans-generational responses at individual, population and community levels. TCS diffused out of mesocosms with a half-life of less than 8 h, so that only the parental generation was directly stressed. At the beginning of the experiment and after 7 days (approximately 2 generations) we analysed responses in the phytoplankton using scanning flow-cytometry. We acquired information on several individually expressed phenotypic traits, such as size, biovolume, pigment fluorescence and packaging, for thousands of individuals per replicated population and derived population and community aggregated traits. We found significant changes in community functioning (increased productivity in terms of biovolume and total fluorescence), with maximal effects at 1 mu g L-1 TCS. We detected significant and dose-dependent responses on population traits, such as changes in abundance for several populations, increased average size and fluorescence of cells, and strong changes in within-population trait mean and variance (suggesting micro-evolutionary effects). We applied the Price equation approach to partition community effects (changes in biovolume or fluorescence) in their physiological and ecological components, and quantified the residual component (including also evolutionary responses). Our results suggested that evolutionary or inheritable phenotypic plasticity responses may represent a significant component of the total observed change following exposure and over relatively small temporal scales.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available