Dipartimento di Scienze, Università Roma Tre, Viale G. Marconi 446, Rome, 00146, Italy.
CIBIO - Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, Vairão, 4485-661, Portugal; Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, R. Campo Alegre, s/n, Porto, 4169 - 007, Portugal.
Zoology (Jena). 2021 Aug;147:125928. doi: 10.1016/j.zool.2021.125928. Epub 2021 Apr 19.
The extensive use of pesticides in agricultural environments produces drastic effects on wildlife, hence the need for less invasive indicators of environmental stress to monitoring the impact of agriculture treatments on biological systems. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA), as measure of developmental instability, has recently been proposed as reliable biomarker of populations stress due to environmental disturbance. We investigate femoral pores (FP) and dorsal head shape (HS) traits in populations of the Italian wall lizard inhabiting agricultural environments to examine whether different pesticide exposures (conventional, organic and control) can cause distinctive degree of FA. High-resolution photographs of FP and HS were taken in the field with a digital camera. The number of FP were counted twice on both sides and HS was analysed using geometric morphometrics with 25 landmarks and 12 semilandmarks. Individuals under conventional management showed higher levels of FA compared to control ones, and females exhibited higher FA levels than males for the FP. However, no significant difference was found for the HS trait. Our study provided evidence that FA may have a real potential as biomarker of population stress in wall lizards, highlighting the importance in the choice of the experimental design and the traits adopted for estimating DI.
在农业环境中广泛使用农药会对野生动物产生巨大影响，因此需要使用侵入性更小的环境压力指标来监测农业处理对生物系统的影响。波动不对称（FA）作为发育不稳定性的衡量标准，最近因其对环境干扰的种群压力的可靠生物标志物而被提出。我们研究了生活在农业环境中的意大利壁蜥种群的股骨孔（FP）和背头形状（HS）特征，以检查不同的农药暴露（常规、有机和对照）是否会导致 FA 的不同程度。使用数码相机在野外拍摄 FP 和 HS 的高分辨率照片。在两侧分别两次计数 FP 的数量，使用 25 个标志点和 12 个半标志点进行 HS 的几何形态测量分析。与对照相比，常规管理下的个体表现出更高水平的 FA，而 FP 中雌性的 FA 水平高于雄性。然而，HS 特征没有发现显著差异。我们的研究提供了证据表明，FA 可能作为壁蜥种群压力的生物标志物具有真正的潜力，突出了在实验设计和用于估计 DI 的特征选择方面的重要性。
