The influence of diet on mercury intake by little tern chicks

Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology
Vitor H PaivaArmando Costa Duarte

Abstract

We assessed mercury levels in the feathers of little tern (Sternula albifrons) chicks from hatching to fledging and in their prey captured by adults in three main foraging habitats: lagoon, salinas, and adjacent sea. These data were used to model mercury concentration in chick feathers through food ingestion, in order to explore the effects that changes in diet would have on the mercury burden of chicks as they aged. The mercury concentration in feathers of chicks raised in sandy beaches was higher than in those raised in salinas. Lagoon prey had a significantly higher mercury concentration (0.18 +/- 0.09 microg g(-1) dry weight [d.w.]) than prey from salinas and the adjacent sea (both 0.06 +/- 0.03 microg g(-1) d.w.). In relation to prey species group, mercury content was significantly higher for bottom fish (0.17 +/- 0.10 microg g(-1) d.w.) than for pelagic (0.08 +/- 0.06 microg g(-1) d.w.), euryhaline fish (0.04 +/- 0.02 microg g(-1) d.w.), and crustacea (0.08 +/- 0.03 microg g(-1) d.w.). To understand the importance of mercury content of each prey group, we ran several theoretical scenarios assuming that chicks were fed on only one species at a time. Considering a diet restricted to lagoon (mostly benthic) prey, A- and B-ch...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jan 15, 2014·Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology·Jungsoo Kim, Jong-Min Oh
Jun 12, 2010·Environmental Pollution·Ben K Greenfield, Andrew Jahn
Aug 12, 2010·Molecular Genetics and Genomics : MGG·Beata Nadratowska-WesołowskaGrzegorz Wegrzyn
Oct 28, 2020·Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology·Silvia AlbertosSilvia Espín
Nov 16, 2019·Chemosphere·José SecoEduarda Pereira

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