Riparian spiders as sentinels of polychlorinated biphenyl contamination across heterogeneous aquatic ecosystems

Abstract

Riparian spiders are being used increasingly to track spatial patterns of contaminants in and fluxing from aquatic ecosystems. However, our understanding of the circumstances under which spiders are effective sentinels of aquatic pollution is limited. The present study tests the hypothesis that riparian spiders may be effectively used to track spatial patterns of sediment pollution by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in aquatic ecosystems with high habitat heterogeneity. The spatial pattern of ΣPCB concentrations in 2 common families of riparian spiders sampled in 2011 to 2013 generally tracked spatial variation in sediment ΣPCBs across all sites within the Manistique River Great Lakes Area of Concern (AOC), a rivermouth ecosystem located on the south shore of the Upper Peninsula, Manistique (MI, USA) that includes harbor, river, backwater, and lake habitats. Sediment ΣPCB concentrations normalized for total organic carbon explained 41% of the variation in lipid-normalized spider ΣPCB concentrations across 11 sites. Furthermore, 2 common riparian spider taxa (Araneidae and Tetragnathidae) were highly correlated (r > 0.78) and had similar mean ΣPCB concentrations when averaged across all years. The results indicate that riparian spiders may be useful sentinels of relative PCB availability to aquatic and riparian food webs in heterogeneous aquatic ecosystems like rivermouths where habitat and contaminant variability may make the use of aquatic taxa less effective. Furthermore, the present approach appears robust to heterogeneity in shoreline development and riparian vegetation that support different families of large web-building spiders. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:1278-1286. 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.

Nanoparticles transported from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems via emerging aquatic insects compromise subsidy quality

“…These data therefore may raise concerns about the consequences for higher trophic levels in riparian systems, including endangered species, associated with the transfer of contaminants such as nanoparticles from the aquatic back to the terrestrial food web. Although recent explorations of the movement and impact of contaminants, such as microplastics 10 , metals 11–14 , polychlorinated biphenyls 15 , pharmaceuticals 16 and in the present study nanoparticles, highlight impairments in the aquatic-to-terrestrial subsidy, research addressing this question is still in its infancy warranting further studies 17 .

Figure 3Nanoparticles in adult caddisflies. ( a ) Environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) images, diagrams of the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy confirming that the particles are Au can be found in Fig.

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The Spider Exposure Pathway and the Potential Risk to Arachnivorous Birds

“…These findings underscore the importance of considering taxon when designing and evaluating screening‐level ecological risk assessments because the taxa sampled can have substantial effects on the conclusions reached. For sites contaminated with MeHg, we suggest that tetragnathid tissue concentrations are preferable to other taxa because they not only provide a conservative estimate of risk but also may provide an additional line of evidence that, if necessary, could be used to characterize the effectiveness of future remediation efforts (e.g., Kraus et al 2017; Walters et al 2018). We do note that the utility of tetragnathids is contingent on their abundance, and their use may be complicated by biomass requirements necessary to achieve target method detection limits (Beaubien et al 2019).…”

Riparian spiders indicate the magnitude and sources of polychlorinated biphenyl contamination at a large contaminated sediment site

“…The sampling locations were as follows: Up1, Up2 ¼ upstream sites; SB ¼ Strong Brook; UTB ¼ Upper Turning Basin; FB-U and -D ¼ Fields Brook upstream and downstream; Mix-U, -M, and -D ¼ upper, middle, and downstream mixing sites. contamination gradient; however, in one case PCBs in araneids were approximately 2Â higher than in tetragnathids (Walters et al 2010), and in another case, concentrations between these taxa closely approached 1 to 1 (Kraus et al 2017).…”

“…That is, are they reliable indicators of one another such that they can be combined in a single statistical analysis or can their tissues can be pooled into a single composite sample for chemical analyses? In 2 prior studies, their PCB concentrations were highly correlated and they ordered sites similarly along a contamination gradient; however, in one case PCBs in araneids were approximately 2× higher than in tetragnathids (Walters et al ), and in another case, concentrations between these taxa closely approached 1 to 1 (Kraus et al ).…”