Abstract
Tropical rivers are the main destinations for tailings from urban, industrial and agricultural activities in the region studied. The present study aimed to investigate if early stages of zebrafish (Danio rerio) development is a viable biological model to assess the toxicity of surface waters of tropical rivers, and whether that toxicity could be correlated to standard water quality indexes. Embryos were exposed to samples from 55 sites from 10 hydrographic basins of rivers in Pernambuco State, northeastern Brazil. Lethality rates, sublethal toxicity based on the general morphology score (GMS) and frequencies of abnormalities were analyzed. Significant mortality was observed in samples of 7 basins. The GMS indicated significant delay in embryo-larval development in 50% of the samples. The highest toxicity was detected in basins within Recife metropolitan area, where 61% of the samples caused sublethal toxicity. Most frequent developmental abnormalities included non-inflation of the swim bladder, delayed hatching and blood stasis. The highest frequencies of blood stasis were detected in samples with highest NH3 concentrations, corroborated by a positive correlation suggesting the existence of a causal relationship. A significant correlation was detected between water quality indexes and GMS with a greater toxic effect being observed in samples collected in areas of greater urban density and greater contamination by domestic sewage. This study demonstrates that the early stages of the zebrafish is a viable ecotoxicological model to assess the toxicity of surface waters and can contribute to a better understanding between the chemical composition and the adverse effects suffered by fish early life stage fish in tropical rivers.
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Data, associated metadata, and calculation tools are available from the corresponding author (pcarvalho@ufpe.br).
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Acknowledgements
Authors would like to acknowledge and thank Pernambuco State Environmental Agency (CPRH) for surface water sample collections for this study, and for providing the results on water quality parameters Dissolved oxygen (DO), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), total phosphorus (P), thermotolerant coliforms (TC), pH and conductivity. Authors are very grateful to all students who contributed during experimental exposures and testing, and to unknown reviewers who helped to increase the quality of this publication.
Author contributions
RNA: Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Formal analysis, Investigation; CFM: Investigation; MKdMA: Investigation; ASXdS: Investigation; EZ-L: Investigation, Writing – review & editing; PSMC: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing original draft, Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Formal analysis, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
Funding
RNA was sponsored by a PhD fellowship from “Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco - FACEPE” and by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001. PSMC (Grant 312308/2016-7) and EZ-L (Grant 311771/2019-0) are research fellows of CNPq.
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Animal management and embryo exposure were performed according to a protocol approved by the Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE).
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Alves, R.N., Mariz, C.F., de Melo Alves, M.K. et al. Zebrafish as a biological model for assessing water quality along tropical hydrographic river basins in Northeast Brazil. Ecotoxicology 32, 908–925 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-023-02695-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-023-02695-y