Abstract
The present work is the first study on the effects of metals on freshwater sponges, based on field and laboratory experiments. Three species, Ephydatia fluviatilis. Ephydatia muelleri and Spongilla lacustris were implanted in variously polluted natural sites. After one month, they showed a substantial growth in spite of high metal levels in the water for Ba, Cd, Cr, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb or Zn according to the site of transfer. Different spicule malformations were observed in specimens according to the implantation site. The quantification of their metal content showed that at the end of the experiment, sponges had accumulated many heavy metals. Some correlation was found between the metal distribution in sponges and in the ambient water. In most cases, accumulation was of the same order of magnitude as in the sediment. Energy-dispersive spectrometry (EDS) and wavelength-dispersive spectrometry (WDS) analyses revealed that metals were not accumulated in the spicules but in the organic skeleton and living tissue. In vitro experiments established that Pb was more toxic than Cu and Zn and that S. lacustris was the least sensitive of the three species. Our results showed that, in their natural habitat, freshwater sponges could grow at metal concentrations higher than the threshold concentration measured in the laboratory.
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