Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Alfred-Kowalke-Str. 17, 10315 Berlin, Germany.
Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Alfred-Kowalke-Str. 17, 10315 Berlin, Germany.
Sci Total Environ. 2018 Apr 1;619-620:1589-1598. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.143. Epub 2017 Oct 26.
Monitoring organic pollutants in wildlife is a common approach to evaluate environmental health, chemical exposure and to make hazard assessments. However, pollutant concentrations measured from different tissue types among studies impede direct comparisons of levels and toxicity benchmarks among species and regions. For example, mercury (Hg) is a metal of both natural and anthropogenic origin which poses health risks for marine and arctic biota in particular. Although hair is recognized as the least invasive sample type for Hg exposure measurement in wildlife, measurements in previous studies have used different tissues among individuals and species. This lack of tissue type consistency hinders cross study comparisons. Therefore to systematically evaluate the use of hair in ecotoxicological studies, total mercury (THg) concentrations measured from hair were compared to values obtained from liver and kidney in 35 Icelandic arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus). THg concentrations varied considerably among tissues with hair and kidney levels generally lower than in liver. Nevertheless, significant correlations among tissue types were observed. THg values in hair were predictive for liver (R=0.61) and kidney THg levels (R=0.51) and liver values were a good predictor of THg in kidney (R=0.77). We provide further evidence that non-invasively collected hair samples reflect the THg levels of internal tissues. We present equations derived from multiple linear regression models that can be used to relate THg levels among tissue types in order to extrapolate THg values from hair to soft tissues. Using these equations, we compare the results of previous studies monitoring THg levels in different tissues of arctic foxes from various regions of the Arctic. Our findings support that hair is a suitable sample matrix for ecotoxicological studies of arctic predators and may be applied in both wildlife welfare and conservation contexts for arctic vulpine species.
监测野生动物中的有机污染物是评估环境健康、化学暴露和进行危害评估的常用方法。然而，不同研究中从不同组织类型测量的污染物浓度阻碍了物种和地区之间水平和毒性基准的直接比较。例如，汞 (Hg) 是一种天然和人为来源的金属，对海洋和北极生物群尤其构成健康风险。虽然毛发被认为是野生动物中汞暴露测量最具侵袭性的样本类型，但以前的研究在个体和物种之间使用了不同的组织类型。这种缺乏组织类型一致性的情况阻碍了跨研究比较。因此，为了系统地评估毛发在生态毒理学研究中的应用，我们将从 35 只冰岛北极狐 (Vulpes lagopus) 的毛发中测量的总汞 (THg) 浓度与从肝脏和肾脏中获得的值进行了比较。组织中 THg 浓度差异很大，毛发和肾脏水平通常低于肝脏。尽管如此，观察到组织类型之间存在显著相关性。毛发中的 THg 值可预测肝脏 (R=0.61) 和肾脏 THg 水平 (R=0.51)，而肝脏值可很好地预测肾脏中的 THg (R=0.77)。我们提供了进一步的证据表明，非侵入性采集的毛发样本反映了内部组织的 THg 水平。我们提出了多元线性回归模型得出的方程，可以用于在组织类型之间建立 THg 水平的关系，以便从毛发推算软组织中的 THg 值。使用这些方程，我们比较了监测来自北极不同地区的北极狐不同组织中 THg 水平的先前研究的结果。我们的研究结果表明，毛发是北极捕食者生态毒理学研究的合适样本矩阵，可应用于北极狐种的野生动物福利和保护背景。
