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Temporal variability of food determines the outcome of pesticide exposure in Daphnia

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Ecological Research

Abstract

In nature the effect that pollutants exert on exposed organisms could depend on the state and dynamics of natural environmental factors as well as on the internal state of the exposed organisms. In this study we evaluated how level and variability of food, as well as the age of exposure can modify the effects of the pesticide deltamethrin on the freshwater crustacean Daphnia magna. The effects of the pesticide were measured on life history and nutritional traits (lipid storage) of the test organisms, which were exposed at different juvenile ages under constant (high and low) food as well as food shortage treatments. Our results show that deltamethrin exerts significant effects on all evaluated traits of Daphnia, and several responses are shaped by deltamethrin interacting with food and age of exposure. Two novel results are remarkable. First, at constant food treatments the effects of the pesticide were stronger on younger individuals, whereas in food shortage treatments the effects were stronger on older individuals. Second, we observed that deltamethrin exerted stronger effects on certain traits (survival, body growth and median consumption time of lipids) in Daphnia exposed to food shortage, as compared to constant low food treatments. Our results highlight the importance of the dynamics of resources in freshwater systems for shaping the vulnerability of herbivores to pollutants released to the ecosystem and improve our understanding of how the organismal responses to environmental stress are determined by the ecological condition of the organisms at the instant of being exposed to perturbations.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by FONDECYT grant 1120958 to R. R. -J. C. A. R and J. G-B acknowledge graduate scholarships from CONICYT. We thank M. Fernandez-González for his help in performing lab experiments and M. Arancibia for technical lab assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Nacional del Medio Ambiente, Fundación de La Universidad de Chile, Av. Larraín 9975 La Reina, Santiago, Chile

    Claudio A. Reyes, Rodrigo Ramos-Jiliberto & Javier González-Barrientos

  2. Instituto de Filosofía y Ciencias de la Complejidad, IFICC, Los Alerces 3024, Santiago, Chile

    Rodrigo Ramos-Jiliberto

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  1. Claudio A. Reyes
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  2. Rodrigo Ramos-Jiliberto
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Correspondence to Claudio A. Reyes.

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Reyes, C.A., Ramos-Jiliberto, R. & González-Barrientos, J. Temporal variability of food determines the outcome of pesticide exposure in Daphnia . Ecol Res 30, 451–460 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-014-1240-4

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