EARLY HEARING DETECTION AND INTERVENTION VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
MARCH 2-5, 2021

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5/23/2018 | 10:00 AM - 10:15 AM | TRACE ELEMENTS SHED IN EXUVIAE VERSUS EXPORTED FROM CONTAMINATED WETLANDS BY EMERGING DRAGONFLIES | 410 B

TRACE ELEMENTS SHED IN EXUVIAE VERSUS EXPORTED FROM CONTAMINATED WETLANDS BY EMERGING DRAGONFLIES

Dragonfly adults and their aquatic immature stages are an important part of food webs and provide a link between aquatic and terrestrial components. During emergence, contaminants can be shed with their exuviae or be incorporated into their body and enter the terrestrial food web as adults fly away. Our previous work established contaminants accumulating in dragonfly nymphs throughout a wetland system constructed to regulate pH and remove trace metals from an industrial effluent line. We analyzed accumulation of 16 elements in over 400 samples distributed across14 dragonfly species belonging to 2 families and 11 genera. Some elements (e.g. Al, Fe, Ba, Pb) primarily surface bound or were incorporated into the exuviae that is shed and left behind in the wetland, whereas others accumulated more in the teneral (e.g. Cu, Zn, Mg, B). Patterns of accumulation in/on exuviae versus teneral differed among species, but similarities within subfamilies were observed. Concentration of trace elements in nymphs were indicative of trophic doses when preyed upon directly, but not necessarily to that of predators preying on emerging dragonflies. Future work needs to evaluate underlying causes of interspecific variation of trace element accumulation.

Invertebrate
Metal
Aquatic-terrestrial Linkage

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Presenters/Authors

Dean Fletcher (), Savannah River Ecology Laboratory-University of Georgia, fletcher@srel.uga.edu;