Acronym BIOPHARMA
Category
Fisheries
Title Medicating the environment: individual and population-level effects of long-term exposure to pharmaceuticals in estuaries Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Vanessa F. Fonseca Coordinator email NA
Coordinator institution
MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (Portugal)
Institutions involved
CESAM - Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (Portugal) ,
INIAV IP - National Institute for Agrarian and Veterinary Research, IP (Portugal) ,
UC - University of Coimbra (Portugal) ,
Start year 2016 End year 2019 Funding (€) € 16,659,300 Website https://vffonseca.wixsite.com/biopharma Summary Estuaries are highly productive and valuable ecosystems, providing a large number of natural services and social benefits (eg nursery areas) [1,2]. These systems are also subject to various anthropogenic pressures that converge on estuaries [eg 6]. For this reason, there is a growing international effort to improve the management of diffuse pressure sources in these ecosystems. Pharmaceutical compounds are considered emerging pollutants of priority concern, due to their ubiquity in the aquatic environment and their potential to cause biological effects even at low concentrations. They are also considered persistent or pseudo-persistent contaminants, given their increasing use and constant release into the aquatic environment, especially from wastewater treatment plants, which is the genesis of the expression 'medicating the environment' [11]. In this context, evaluating the effects of pharmaceutical waste on the estuarine environment is extremely important in order to ensure efficient management and compliance with environmental quality requirements. However, research still faces gaps in knowledge, particularly regarding bioaccumulation, the effects of chronic exposure and drug mixtures in the natural environment. The existing information is even more scarce if we consider marine and coastal organisms [13]. As such, the objective of this project is to estimate and evaluate the effects of prolonged exposure to drugs at the level of fish populations in estuaries, based on effects at the individual level. The proposal is made up of three complementary tasks that include environmental assessment, experimental tests and the development of predictive models of the effects of exposure to drugs. The first task aims to quantify certain pharmaceutical compounds in water samples and in organisms of different trophic levels, in order to evaluate bioaccumulation factors and potential trophic transfer of these contaminants in estuaries. Bioaccumulation and bioamplification factors will provide key information about the toxicodynamics of these contaminants in the estuarine environment and the effective risk they pose to non-target species. The study will focus on migratory marine fish species of commercial interest that use estuaries as nurseries during their juvenile phase, such as the common sole Solea solea, the Senegalese sole Solea senegalensis and the sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax. Other organisms from different trophic levels will also be analyzed in order to cover the main links of the estuarine food web. The simultaneous determination of total and organic mercury accumulation in organisms at different trophic levels will contribute to validating the previously described trophic dynamics and bioamplification pathways. The second task will use juvenile fish to evaluate the harmful effects of prolonged exposure to selected drugs, individually and in mixtures. Given the difficulty of discerning, in the environment, the effects of these contaminants from effects caused by other natural and anthropogenic sources of pressure, experimental studies will be carried out in the laboratory to determine multiple biological effects (eg growth, condition, biomarkers, behavior), which will support the development of models in the final task. Proteomic analysis will also be used to detect new or more specific biomarkers of chronic exposure and/or drug effects; This information will be of great interest in future estuarine monitoring studies. In the final task, models will be used to estimate population-level effects from observed individual effects, in order to produce an ecologically relevant approach. This approach brings together a dynamic energy balance model (DEB) with an individual-based model (IBM): The DEB allows modeling the dynamic nature of individual metabolic responses, while the IBM will be used to represent biological interactions (eg feed efficiency, escape to predators) in a stochastic environment. The DEBIBM model will bridge the gap between variable environmental conditions and observations from toxicity testing in a controlled environment. In general, the proposal addresses a current and priority topic, with ecological and societal relevance. The innovative approach will produce a unique assessment in Portugal (and rare in the world) of the impacts of pharmaceuticals in estuaries which, combined with targeted experimentation and detection of effects on the individual, will allow estimating effects at population level. The results will represent an important step towards better management of environmental quality in estuaries. The research team is made up of experts from complementary areas within the scope of the project, namely ecologists, ecotoxicologists and environmental chemists, in order to achieve the proposed objectives.
Keywords
Impacts;
Fish;
Pharmaceuticals;
Seabass;
Flatfish;
Food web;
Sole;
Fish health;
Toxic substances;
Marine Region
38
Portuguese Waters (27.IXa,27.IXb)
1
Marine Region Map
