Departamento de Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain.
Chemosphere. 2011 Jul;84(5):533-7. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2011.04.030. Epub 2011 May 4.
Behavioural endpoints are a good link between physiological and ecological effects. However long-term behavioural endpoints are not uniformly studied over all different organism groups. For example behaviour has been scarcely studied in planarians. Unionized ammonia (NH(3)) is one of the most widespread pollutants in developed countries, and is known to alter animal behaviour. In this study a long-term (30 d) bioassay was conducted to assess the effect of this pollutant on survival and behavioural activity (e.g. locomotion activity) of the freshwater planarian Polycelis felina. One control and three environmentally-realistic concentrations of unionized ammonia (treatments of 0.02, 0.05, and 0.09 mg N-NH(3) L(-1)) were used in quintuplicate. The behaviour of planarians was measured after 0, 10, 20 and 30 d of ammonia exposure. Mortality was recorded every 2 d. Unionized ammonia increased mortality in the two highest NH(3) concentrations and the locomotory activity was depressed in all treatments after 20 d of exposure. Behavioural effect was observed at concentrations 20 times lower than the short-term LC50 for this species. Previous studies proposed safe concentrations of unionized ammonia of 0.01-0.10 mg N-NH(3) L(-1) to aquatic ecosystems, but our study has shown that these concentrations will affect planarians. Because planarians play a key role in streams (as predator/scavenger), safe concentrations should be below 0.02 mg N-NH(3) L(-1) to protect this species in the freshwater community. Our results can contribute to improve the knowledge about ammonia toxicity to freshwater ecosystems, we recommend that safe concentrations of unionized ammonia should be based on very sensitive species.
行为终点是生理和生态效应之间的良好联系。然而，长期的行为终点并不是在所有不同的生物群体中都得到统一研究。例如，扁形动物的行为研究很少。氨（NH3）是发达国家最广泛的污染物之一，已知会改变动物的行为。在这项研究中，进行了一项为期 30 天的生物测定，以评估这种污染物对淡水扁形动物 Polycelis felina 的生存和行为活动（例如运动活性）的影响。使用了一个对照和三个环境现实的氨非离子化浓度（处理浓度分别为 0.02、0.05 和 0.09 mg N-NH3 L-1），每个处理重复五次。在暴露于氨 0、10、20 和 30 天后测量扁形动物的行为。每两天记录一次死亡率。在两个最高 NH3 浓度下，氨增加了死亡率，并且在暴露 20 天后所有处理组的运动活性都受到抑制。在比该物种短期 LC50 低 20 倍的浓度下观察到了行为效应。先前的研究提出了氨的非离子化浓度为 0.01-0.10 mg N-NH3 L-1 对水生生态系统是安全的，但我们的研究表明，这些浓度将影响扁形动物。因为扁形动物在溪流中扮演着重要的角色（作为捕食者/清道夫），所以安全浓度应该低于 0.02 mg N-NH3 L-1，以保护淡水生物群落中的这种物种。我们的研究结果可以帮助提高对氨对淡水生态系统的毒性的认识，我们建议将氨的非离子化浓度安全值基于非常敏感的物种。
