Accumulation Pattern of Essential and Xenobiotic Elements in Feather Growth Locations, Short-time and Long-time Biomonitoring with Tropic Levels Approach in Wintering Waterfowl of Northern Iran
Subject Areas : Environmental pollutions (water, soil and air)Mahdi Sadeghi 1 , سید محمود قاسمپوری 2 * , Nader Bahramifar 3
1 - Master of Science in Environmental Pollution, Faculty of Natural Resources and Marine Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Noor, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources and Marine Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Noor, Iran
3 - Associate Professor, Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Resources and Marine Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Noor, Iran
Keywords: Essential elements, Xenobiotic elements, Feather, Biomonitoring, Waterfowl, Trophic levels,
Abstract :
Background and Purpose: Human activities produce large amounts of metal emissions that spread all over the environment and contaminate ecosystems and food webs up to the human level. Also, heavy metal pollution has become an important problem in recent years. These metals are potentially harmful to most organisms at some level of exposure and absorption. The aim of this study on one hand is investigating mercury accumulation in primaries and the outermost tail feathers between waterfowl with different diet and the other hand investigating different levels of some Xenobiotic (Hg, Cd and Pb) and Essential (Fe, Cu, Zn and Ni) elements in outermost tail feather segments, wing primaries and breast feathers in four species of waterfowl with different locations in food chain which including Graylag Goose (Anser anser), Common teal (Anas crecca), Pintail (Anas acuta) and Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos).
Methods: In this study, Mercury was measured with the AMA 254 Advanced Mercury Analyzer, and other metals were measured by ICP/OES (Inductively coupled plasma/optical emission spectrometry).
Results: The results showed that there is a statistically significant difference between species and segments in mean mercury concentration and other heavy metals (sig<0.001) and in primary concentrations (sig<0.001 for most primaries).
Conclusion: The comparison between segments and primaries in mercury accumulation showed that each of the four species did not differ in trophic-level classification. It showed that they were at the same trophic level.
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