Longevity and reproduction of Ceriodaphnia dubia in receiving waters

Abstract

Seven‐day tests with Ceriodaphnia dubia are commonly used to estimate toxicity of effluents or receiving waters but can sometimes yield no toxicity outcomes even if pollutants are present. We conducted two sets of full life‐cycle tests with C. dubia to (1) determine whether tests with longer exposure periods to low concentrations of contaminants in ambient water might reveal evidence of toxicity that could not be discerned from 7‐d tests and (2) determine the relative importance of water quality versus food as factors influencing C. dubia longevity and reproduction. In the first set of tests, C. dubia was reared in diluted mineral water (a negative control), water from a stream impacted by coal fly‐ash, or water from a retention basin containing sediments contaminated with mercury, other metals, and polychlorinated biphenyls. The second set of tests used water from the retention basin only. Before testing, though, water in the second set of tests was either filtered or not filtered, and food was either added or not added. Ceriodaphnia dubia longevity and reproduction did not differ much among the three water types in the first set of tests, but both longevity and reproduction were strongly affected by the filtering and food‐addition treatments in the second set of tests. Thus, C. dubia appeared to be relatively insensitive to general water quality factors but sensitive to food‐related factors. In five of the six full life‐cycle tests, lifetime reproduction by C. dubia could not be reliably predicted from reproduction data from the first 7 d of testing (R2 < 0.35, by regression analysis). The increase in predictability of lifetime reproduction of C. dubia as a function of test duration also differed among water types in the first set of tests and among treatments in the second set of tests. Thus, it may not be possible to reliably extrapolate the results of 7‐d tests with C. dubia to longer time scales.

The Role of Traditional and Novel Toxicity Test Methods in Assessing Stormwater and Sediment Contamination

“…Even the traditional exposure time used in toxicity tests may be inadequate to predict long-term effects. Lifetime C. dubia reproduction was unrelated to water quality conditions and more related to food-related factors (Stewart and Konetsky, 1998). This suggests assumptions of the short-term chronic toxicity tests may be questionable in some situations.…”