Abstract:

This study evaluated the >400-fold tolerance to acute waterborne Cd of a metal-tolerant fish, yellow perch (YP, Perca flavescens), relative to a sensitive model fish, rainbow trout (RBT, Oncorhynchus mykiss), from the perspective of the acute Cd biotic ligand model (BLM). Three-hour gill binding characteristics for Cd and its competitor, Ca, in both species exhibited only small quantitative differences, but gill Cd accumulations at 3 h and 24 h, which were associated with 50% lethality at 96 h (3- and 24-h LA50s), were 52- to 60-fold higher in YP relative to RBT. However, the acute Cd BLM cannot be extended from RBT to YP by simple adjustments of LA50 values because unlike RBT, in YP, LA50s (3 and 24 h) were 26- to 47-fold greater than the capacity of the characterized set of Cd-binding sites. Moreover, 3-h gill Ca and Cd binding characteristics in wild YP, collected from one clean (Geneva) and two metalcontaminated softwater lakes (Hannah and Whitson) around Sudbury region, northern Ontario, revealed that chronic waterborne factors like hardness and Cd preexposure can influence both Cd and Ca binding in fish gills and could have major implications for the future refinement of the acute Cd BLM approach.

Notes:

Record Number: 2103