Abstract
Individual trait variation is essential for populations to cope with multiple stressors and continuously changing environments. The immense number of possible stressor combinations and the influence of phenotypic variation makes experimental testing for effects on organisms challenging. The acquisition of such data requires many replicates and is notoriously laborious. It is further complicated when responses occur over short time periods. To overcome such challenges, we developed an automated imaging platform to acquire temporally highly resolved individual data. We tested this platform by exposing copepods to a combination of a biotic stressor (predator cues) and a toxicant (copper) and measured the growth response of individual copepods. We tested the automatically acquired data against published manually acquired data with much lower temporal resolution. We find the same general potentiating effects of predator cues on the adverse effects of copper, and the influence of an individual’s clutch identity on its ability to resist stress, between the data obtained from low and high temporal resolution. However, when using the high temporal resolution, we also uncovered effects of clutch ID on the timing and duration of stage transitions, which highlights the importance of considering phenotypic variation in ecotoxicological testing. Phenotypic variation is usually not acknowledged in ecotoxicological testing. Our approach is scalable, affordable, and adjustable to accommodate both aquatic and terrestrial organisms, and a wide range of visually detectable endpoints. We discuss future extensions that would further widen its applicability.
Highlights
The life of any organism is a continuous struggle with different stressors, be it from other organisms or the physical environment
Automated platform for image acquisition We used an automatized imaging setup to follow individual growth at an hourly resolution, with a self-made experimental system that is capable of filming single culture plate wells repeatedly over the course of a copepod’s development time
When we focus on the treatment effects, copper alone delayed development while predator cues did not have an impact
Summary
The life of any organism is a continuous struggle with different stressors, be it from other organisms or the physical environment. Since the last century organisms are exposed to novel artificial substances of anthropogenic origin, such as chemical toxicants, as well as rapid changes in the environment due to human activities. Most studies on mixture toxicity and multiple stressors focus either on interactive effects of two toxicants, or one pollutant in interaction with changes in the physical environment (Gunderson, Armstrong & Stillman, 2016). The effects of combined stressor exposures range from synergistic to antagonistic when compared to single stressor exposure (Rose, Warne & Lim, 2001; Fischer, Roffler & Eggen, 2012; Holmstrup et al, 2010), and the scales and timing of response differ widely, rendering it challenging to predict the outcome of additional stressors The effects of combined stressor exposures range from synergistic to antagonistic when compared to single stressor exposure (Rose, Warne & Lim, 2001; Fischer, Roffler & Eggen, 2012; Holmstrup et al, 2010), and the scales and timing of response differ widely, rendering it challenging to predict the outcome of additional stressors (e.g. Segner, Schmitt-Jansen & Sabater, 2014)
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