{"id":338,"date":"2015-08-05T20:23:33","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T20:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/?page_id=338"},"modified":"2015-08-26T12:00:52","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T12:00:52","slug":"biotest-ecotoxicological-applications-of-developmental-instability","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/biotest-ecotoxicological-applications-of-developmental-instability\/","title":{"rendered":"Biotest: Ecotoxicological Applications of Developmental Instability"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>“At the Second Biotest Conference (September 1991, Helsinki), Vladimir Zakharov drew an analogy between an ecotoxicologist’s use of developmental instability and a physician’s use of deviations from normal body temperature.\u00a0 Regardless of the availability of more sophisticated and specific methods, a physician will usually measure body temperature first.\u00a0 It is a diagnostic measure of physiological homeostasis, and is a most informative measure of individual health.\u00a0 Likewise, we view developmental stability, in all its myriad forms, as a valuable diagnostic tool of first resort.”\u00a0\u00a0 (Graham et al. 1993c)<\/p>\n

Developmental stability<\/span><\/a> refers to an individual’s ability to produce a consistent phenotype in a particular environment.\u00a0\u00a0 One actually measures developmental instability, the converse of developmental stability, by examining slight, random deviations from perfect symmetry.\u00a0 Such random asymmetry is called fluctuating asymmetry.\u00a0 Because it may be caused by either genetic or environmental stress, fluctuating asymmetry has obvious applications in ecotoxicology (Graham et al. 1993a, b).\u00a0 Nearly 30 years ago, David Valentine, Michael Soule, and Paul Samollow (1972) showed that fin rays of coastal marine fishes were more asymmetric in polluted than in clean waters.<\/p>\n

In the early 1990s, Vladimir Zakharov and his colleagues at Moscow’s Koltsov Institute extended the approach pioneered by Valentine et al. (1972) to include a variety of related techniques based on the concept of homeostasis.\u00a0 Zakharov called this approach Biotest (Zakharov and Clarke 1993).\u00a0 Fluctuating asymmetry is central to the Biotest approach.\u00a0 Since 1991, several biotest projects have been conducted in Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and Australia.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Waste lagoon, northern Russia, 1992<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0Goldfish with Deformed Jaw–Wastewater Pond, Ukraine<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0Fucus <\/i>from Clean Control Site, Puget Sound<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Fucus<\/i> from Polluted Site, Puget Sound
\nThe Biotest approach nicely complements the more widely used Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI), which excels at detecting changes in community structure.\u00a0 But IBI does not discriminate well between the effects of physical habitat disruption and pollution (Karr et al. 1986).\u00a0 The aspect of IBI intended to measure the effects of pollution on individual organisms is the frequency of gross abnormalities and disease.\u00a0 These are very insensitive indicators of pollution.\u00a0 Fluctuating asymmetry, on the other hand, is relatively insensitive to habitat disruption, but it is very sensitive to even mild pollution.\u00a0 Increased asymmetry will manifest itself long before the appearance of gross abnormalities and disease.<\/p>\n

My students and I found little evidence of\u00a0 gross deformities and disease in fishes of lower Silver Creek, an urban stream in Rome, Georgia.\u00a0 The fish from Silver Creek appeared to be healthy.\u00a0 Thus, it was not clear whether habitat disruption or pollutants were responsible for the poor IBI scores.\u00a0 The stream was channelized, choked with sediment, and a sewer line ran down the stream bed for some distance.\u00a0 Storm drains, which may contribute pollutants, ran into the stream as well.\u00a0 Was pollution contributing to the low IBI scores in Silver Creek?\u00a0 We therefore examined fluctuating asymmetry of two fishes (central stoneroller and Alabama hogsucker) and three aquatic invertebrates (Leptonema, Stenonema, and Isonychia<\/i>) from Silver Creek and West Armuchee Creek, a nearby unpolluted stream in the Chattahoochee National Forest.\u00a0 Central stonerollers and the caddisflies (Leptonema<\/i>) <\/i>from Silver Creek were more asymmetric than those from West Armuchee Creek.\u00a0 Alabama hogsuckers from Silver Creek also had reversed polarity of scales in 10 percent of the fish examined (Graham 1996).\u00a0 Thus, the Biotest approach indicated that pollution stress was also likely, in addition to the more obvious physical disturbance.<\/p>\n

\"leptonema2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Asymmetry in the caddisfly Leptonema<\/i><\/p>\n

In addition to the Biotest project on Silver Creek, my students and I have examined the effects of lead and benzene on fluctuating asymmetry of sternopleural bristles in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster<\/i> (Graham et al. 1993c).\u00a0 Fruitflies exposed to high concentrations of both lead and benzene show significantly greater bristle asymmetry.\u00a0 Moreover, flies exposed to 10,000 mg\/kg benzene show a transition from fluctuating asymmetry to directional asymmetry; they become more right-handed for sternopleural bristles.<\/p>\n

\"\" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bristle Asymmetry in Drosophila<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bristle Asymmetry in Drosophila<\/i><\/p>\n

Thus, developmental stability is a valuable indicator of ecosystem health that complements\u00a0 other ecotoxicological approaches.<\/p>\n

\n

References<\/p>\n

Freeman, D. C., J. M. Emlen, J. H. Graham, R. L. Mara, M. Tracy, and C. L. Alados. 1996.\u00a0 Developmental instability as a bioindicator of ecosystem health.\u00a0 Pages 170-177 In<\/i> J. R. Barrow, E. D. McArthur, R. E. Sosebee, and R. J. Tausch (eds.). Proceedings: shrubland ecosystem dynamics in a changing environment. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. General Technical Report INT-GTR-338.<\/p>\n

Graham, J. H. 1996.\u00a0 Biological integrity of Lower Silver Creek. Unpublished Report for the City of Rome and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.<\/p>\n

Graham, J. H., J. H. Emlen, and D. C. Freeman. 1993a.\u00a0 Developmental stability and its applications in ecotoxicology.\u00a0 Ecotoxicology<\/i> 2: 175-184.<\/p>\n

Graham, J. H., D. C. Freeman, and J. M. Emlen. 1993b.\u00a0 Developmental stability: a sensitive indicator of populations under stress.\u00a0 Pages 136-158 In<\/i> W. G. Landis, J. S. Hughes, and M. A. Lewis (eds.). Environmental toxicology and Risk Assessment. ASTM STP 1179. American Society for Testing and Materials, Philadelphia, PA.<\/p>\n

Graham, J. H., K. E. Roe, and T. B. West. 1993c.\u00a0 Effects of lead and benzene on the developmental stability of Drosophila melanogaster. Ecotoxicology<\/i> 2: 185-195.<\/p>\n

Tracy, M, D. C. Freeman, J. M. Emlen, J. H. Graham, and E. A. Hough. 1995.\u00a0 Developmental instability as a biomonitor of environmental stress. Pages 313-337 In<\/i> F. M. Butterworth et al. Biomonitors and Biomarkers as Indicators of Environmental Change.\u00a0 Plenum Press, New York.<\/p>\n

Zakharov, V. M. and G. M. Clarke. 1993. Biotest: a new integrated biologiocal approach for assessing the condition of natural environments.\u00a0 International Biotest Foundation, Russian Affiliate, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.<\/p>\n

\n

Last Updated\u00a05\u00a0August 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0“At the Second Biotest Conference (September 1991, Helsinki), Vladimir Zakharov drew an analogy between an ecotoxicologist’s use of developmental instability and a physician’s use of deviations from normal body temperature.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-338","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/338\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/jgraham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}