Miraly Hadis, Razavi N Roxanna, Vogl Annabelle A, Kraus Richard T, Gorman Ann Marie, Limburg Karin E
State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, New York13210, United States.
U.S. Geological Survey, Great Lakes Science Center, Lake Erie Biological Station, 380 Huron Street, Huron, Ohio44839, United States.
Environ Sci Technol Lett. 2022 Dec 14;10(3):222-227. doi: 10.1021/acs.estlett.2c00755. eCollection 2023 Mar 14.
Mercury (Hg) uptake in fish is affected by diet, growth, and environmental factors such as primary productivity or oxygen regimes. Traditionally, fish Hg exposure is assessed using muscle tissue or whole fish, reflecting both loss and uptake processes that result in Hg bioaccumulation over entire lifetimes. Tracking changes in Hg exposure of an individual fish chronologically throughout its lifetime can provide novel insights into the processes that affect Hg bioaccumulation. Here we use eye lenses to determine Hg uptake at an annual scale for individual fish. We assess the widely distributed benthic round goby () from the Baltic Sea, Lake Erie, and the St. Lawrence River. We aged layers of the eye lens using proportional relationships between otolith length at age and eye lens radius for each individual fish. Mercury concentrations were quantified using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The eye lens Hg content revealed that Hg exposure increased with age in Lake Erie and the Baltic Sea but decreased with age in the St. Lawrence River, a trend not detected using muscle tissues. This novel methodology for measuring Hg concentration over time with eye lens chronology holds promise for quantifying how global change processes like increasing hypoxia affect the exposure of fish to Hg.
鱼类对汞（Hg）的摄取受饮食、生长以及初级生产力或氧气状况等环境因素的影响。传统上，鱼类汞暴露是通过肌肉组织或整条鱼来评估的，这反映了导致汞在整个生命周期中生物累积的损失和摄取过程。按时间顺序跟踪单个鱼类在其一生中汞暴露的变化，可以为影响汞生物累积的过程提供新的见解。在这里，我们使用鱼眼晶状体来确定单个鱼类每年的汞摄取量。我们评估了来自波罗的海、伊利湖和圣劳伦斯河的广泛分布的底栖圆口铜鱼（）。我们利用每条鱼年龄与耳石长度和眼晶状体半径之间的比例关系对眼晶状体的层进行老化。使用激光烧蚀电感耦合等离子体质谱法定量汞浓度。眼晶状体汞含量显示，伊利湖和波罗的海的汞暴露随年龄增加，而圣劳伦斯河的汞暴露随年龄减少，这一趋势使用肌肉组织未检测到。这种利用眼晶状体年代学随时间测量汞浓度的新方法有望量化诸如缺氧加剧等全球变化过程如何影响鱼类对汞的暴露。
