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Multistress effects on goldfish (Carassius auratus) behavior and metabolism

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Abstract

Crossed effects between climate change and chemical pollutions were identified on community structure and ecosystem functioning. Temperature rising affects the toxic properties of pollutants and the sensitiveness of organisms to chemicals stress. Inversely, chemical exposure may decrease the capacity of organisms to respond to environmental changes. The aim of our study was to assess the individual and crossed effects of temperature rising and pesticide contamination on fish. Goldfish, Carassius auratus, were exposed during 96 h at two temperatures (22 and 32 °C) to a mixture of common pesticides (S-metolachlor, isoproturon, linuron, atrazine-desethyl, aclonifen, pendimethalin, and tebuconazol) at two environmentally relevant concentrations (total concentrations MIX1 = 8.4 μg L−1 and MIX2 = 42 μg L−1). We investigated the sediment reworking behavior, which has a major ecological functional role. We also focused on three physiological traits from the cellular up to the whole individual level showing metabolic status of fish (protein concentration in liver and muscle, hepatosomatic index, and Fulton’s condition factor). Individual thermal stress and low concentrations of pesticides decreased the sediment reworking activity of fish and entrained metabolic compensation with global depletion in energy stores. We found that combined chemical and thermal stresses impaired the capacity of fish to set up an efficient adaptive response. Our results strongly suggest that temperature will make fish more sensitive to water contamination by pesticides, raising concerns about wild fish conservation submitted to global changes.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful for technical help provided by Annie Perrault and Yannick Combarieu. Thanks are also due to Lisa Jacquin for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Compliance with ethical standards

Experimental procedures were conducted under French animal handler’s certificate no. 31-103, giving authorization to experiment on living vertebrates. This work has been carried out as a part of “ADAPT’EAU” (ANR-11-CEPL-008), a project supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) within the framework of “The Global Environmental Changes and Societies (GEC&S) program.” AG was supported by a doctoral grant of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

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The authors confirm no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université de Toulouse; INPT, UPS; EcoLab, ENSAT, Avenue de l’Agrobiopole, 31326, Castanet-Tolosan, France

    Allison Gandar, Séverine Jean, Julie Canal & Pascal Laffaille

  2. CNRS; UMR 5245 EcoLab, 31062, Toulouse, France

    Allison Gandar, Séverine Jean, Julie Canal, Franck Gilbert & Pascal Laffaille

  3. Université de Toulouse; INPT, ENSAT; UMR 1388 Génétique, Physiologie et Systèmes d’Elevage (GenPhySE), 31326, Castanet-Tolosan, France

    Nathalie Marty-Gasset

  4. INRA; UMR 1388 GenPhySE, 31326, Castanet-Tolosan, France

    Nathalie Marty-Gasset

  5. Université de Toulouse; INPT, UPS; Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement (EcoLab), 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062, Toulouse, France

    Franck Gilbert

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  1. Allison Gandar
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  2. Séverine Jean
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Correspondence to Allison Gandar or Séverine Jean.

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Gandar, A., Jean, S., Canal, J. et al. Multistress effects on goldfish (Carassius auratus) behavior and metabolism. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 3184–3194 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-5147-6

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