“The mytilid Brachidontes rodriguezii as a bioindicator organism and sentinel of pollution in coastal areas of Argentina”.

LANDRO S.M; CAJARAVILLE MP; ARRIGHETTI F

Workshop; 6th Workshop for PhD candidates CTA/ECT 2020; 2020

Despite molluscs, particularly mussels, have been widely used as sentinel organisms for estuarine and marine pollution studies for a long time worldwide, few such studies have been carried out in Argentina. Brachidontes rodriguezii (d’Orbigny, 1846) is a filter-feeding mytilid with several features that make it a potentially suitable bioindicator and sentinel species. Besides, some studies have pointed out that B. rodriguezii is able to accumulate different chemical compounds such as hydrocarbons, metals and butyltins (TBT). However, the studies have focused mainly on biochemical biomarkers analyzing the activity of certain enzymes and, so far, only one study has assessed this species through a multiple biomarker approach.The main goal of the present PhD project is to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the biological effects caused by pollution originated from different human activities on the health of the ecosystem engineer B. rodriguezii and to establish the potential use of this species as a pollution bioindicator and sentinel organism in coastal areas of Buenos Aires, Argentina. To achieve this, a selection of multiple biomarkers of anthropogenic impact (at different levels of biological organisation) will be studied in 3 populations of B. rodriguezii across four seasons. In addition, complementary chemical analyses like metals and persistent organic pollutants in tissues, sediment and water will be performed. In this workshop, some preliminary seasonal results related to the organism level —such as the survival on-air as TL50 and the condition index— will be presented, together with some tissue level results —that include cell type composition and the morphology of the digestive gland. In general, most of the biomarkers and parameters presented site-specific differences, in accordance to the level of impact of each site. Some of these differences also showed seasonal variations that might be related to the reproductive period of the species.