Ecological, morphological, and histological studies on Blaps polycresta (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) as biomonitors of cadmium soil pollution

Abstract

Soil pollution in Egypt became far more serious than before due to either the heavy usage of different toxic pesticides or aerosol deposition of industrial pollutants. The present mentioned ground beetle, Blaps polycresta Tschinkel 1975 (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae), showed ecological, morphological, and histological alterations in adult insects as biomonitors. Two cultivated sites (reference and polluted) were chosen for sampling the insects. The results indicated a significant increase in soil cadmium concentration of the polluted site leading to sex-specific difference in cadmium accumulation in gonads and alimentary canal of insects that being higher in males than females. The cadmium pollution leads significantly to a decrease in population density, a reduction in body weight, an increase in mortality rate, and an increase in sex ratio of the insects. The results also revealed a striking decrease in body length of the polluted insects with a marked increase in the percentage of deformed gonads and alimentary canal of both sexes. Some histopathological alterations were also recorded in testis, ovary, and midgut of the polluted insects. Our results confirmed that beetles are a good bioindicator for soil pollution, and the different studied parameters could be easily employed as sensitive monitors for cadmium soil pollution.

Bioaccumulation of Cadmium Affects Development, Mating Behavior, and Fecundity in the Asian Corn Borer, Ostrinia furnacalis

“…In contrast to our study, Jiang et al found that female/male pupal weights of Lymantria dispar (Coleoptera: Lymantriidae) were significantly decreased under Cd stress [43]. Similar reduction effects of Cd on body weight were reported in Blaps polycresta (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) [44]. The body weight of another insect species, Spodoptera exigua (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), was not effected by Cd exposure [41].…”

“…Sun et al reported that a high concentration of Ni damaged the quality of sperm bundles, resulting in a decrease of the oviposition and hatching rates in Spodoptera litura (Fabricius) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) [46]. Additionally, Osman et al showed that Cd exposure caused general necrosis and shape change with distorted chromatin materials in oocytes, which damaged female gonads of the ground beetle, Blaps polycresta (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) [44].…”

Morphological variability of Bembidion minimum (Coleoptera, Carabidae) populations under the influence of natural and anthropogenic factors

“…The size of the body of some species of ground beetles decreases in urban habitats (Weller & Ganzhorn, 2004;Sukhodolskaya, 2013). Researchers have also identified the effects of heavy metal pollution: zinc, lead, cadmium on the morphometric features of ground beetles (Lagisz, 2008;Osman et al, 2015;Sowa & Skalski, 2019). Females from polluted zones are smaller than females from the control populations.…”

Industrial Pollution Evaluation through Enzymatic Biomarkers at Different Localities of El-Sadat Industrial City, Menofia, Egypt.

“…Meanwhile, finding of the accumulation of metals concentration is more accurate and higher in the whole body than a single organ in insects (Cain et al, 1995). Among the famous and distributed insects in any habitat in addition to widely monitoring the accumulation of heavy metals were ants (Belskii and Belskaya, 2013;Skaldina et al, 2018), beetles (Bednarska et al, 2013;Osman et al, 2015;Zhou et al, 2019), and grasshopper ( Del Toro et al, 2010;Mustafa and El-Shazly, 2017) they consider as good bioindicator for metal pollution especially in industrial areas.…”