Development of an expert system for the integration of biomarker responses in mussels into an animal health index

Abstract

Biomarkers on sentinel organisms are utilised worldwide in biomonitoring programs. However, the lack of effective interpretational capacity has hampered their uptake for use for assessment of risk in environmental management. The aim of the present study was to develop and test an objective decision-support or expert system capable of integrating biomarker results into a five-level health-status index. The expert system is based on a set of rules derived from available data on responses to natural and contaminant-induced stress of marine mussels. Integration of parameters includes: level of biological organization; biological significance; mutual interrelationship; and qualitative trends in a stress gradient. The system was tested on a set of biomarker data obtained from the field and subsequently validated with data from previous studies. The results demonstrate that the expert system can effectively quantify the biological effects of different levels of pollution. The system represents a simple tool for risk assessment of the harmful impact of contaminants by providing a clear indication of the degree of stress syndrome induced by pollutants in mussels.

A multibiomarker approach in the clam Ruditapes decussatus to assess the impact of pollution in the Ria Formosa lagoon, South Coast of Portugal

“…To contribute also to a decision--support tool or expert system capable of integrating the selected biomarkers battery in the five--level Health Status Index Table 1 Ranks and corresponding to colour codes for the ecological quality indices applied to the sites within the Ria Formosa Lagoon. Dagnino et al (2007) was applied for each site using the DiSAV Expert System (DES). The results of both indices obtained for each site were adapted to a colour code (Table 1) Temperature varied markedly during the sampling period, following the typical seasonal variation pattern.…”

“…To address this issue biomarkers--based indices were developed that rank sampling sites according to contamination gradients (Beliaeff and Burgeot, 2002;Dagnino et al, 2007) and provide environmental managers with decision--support tools to evaluate the ecosystems "health". In this study, two different biomarker indices were used: the Integrated Biomarker Response (IBR) index (Beliaeff and Burgeot, 2002) and the Health Status Index (HSI) calculated by the expert system (Dagnino et al, 2007).…”

Effects of various pollutant mixtures on immune responses of the blue mussel (Mytilus edulis) collected at a salinity gradient in Danish coastal waters

“…Blue mussels are permanently exposed to contaminants in the water column due to their filter-feeding behaviour and accumulate toxins (Dagnino et al, 2007;Widdows and Donkin, 1992).…”

Application of stress index in evaluating toxicological response of soil microbial community to contaminants in soils

“…However, few studies have investigated the ecological health or functions of urban soils in Beijing, despite the many reports of accumulation and distribution of heavy metals in urban soils (Wang et al, 2011). The integrated stress index is usually more useful to visualize between-site and/or between survey differences for comparison with exposure (Dagnino et al, 2007). In this study, the integrated stress index known as the microbial stress index (MSI) was evaluated in urban park sites in which soils were contaminated with multiple heavy metals.…”