Spider Webs and Lichens as Bioindicators of Heavy Metals: A Comparison Study in the Vicinity of a Copper Smelter (Poland)

Agnieszka Stojanowska,Tomasz Olszowski,Marta Bożym,Justyna Rybak,Jan Stefan Bihałowicz

doi:10.3390/su12198066

Abstract

This paper presents the comparison of heavy metals accumulation in spider webs from Agelenidae family (Eratigena atrica and Agelena labyrinthica) and lichens Hypogymnia physodes, exposed to pollution for two months. Webs were obtained from the laboratory-reared spiders and stretched on Petri dish while lichens were transplanted from Stobrawa Landscape Park into the study area. Concentrations of Cu, Zn, Ni, Pb and As were determined in both biomonitors and the elevated values indicated the impact of the copper smelter and surrounding roads. Our study revealed that webs were more sensitive than lichens to emissions of pollutants, and for all of the studied elements, the determined concentrations were much higher for spider webs. The results of similarity tests showed a clear difference among the concentrations of Cu, Zn, Ni and As in lichens and spider webs, with the exception of Pb, suggesting that this element could be accumulated in a similar way by both bioindicators. These differences are probably due to their morphological and ecological dissimilarities suggesting that spider webs should be favorably applied where the use of lichens is improper due to the drought, which is an unfavorable condition for accumulation of elements in lichens, or their limited uptake of elements.

Highlights

Biomonitoring of air pollutants with the application of lichens has become very popular over the years [1]
The sets of metal concentrations in lichens and on spider webs were tested for normality using the Shapiro–Wilk test
This research was supposed to compare the usefulness of two bioindicators: spider webs and lichens

Summary

Introduction

Biomonitoring of air pollutants with the application of lichens has become very popular over the years [1]. Lichens have been successfully used for more than 30 years for the assessment of the atmospheric deposition of heavy metals in different areas [3,4]. The following advantages of this method are underlined: the exactly defined entrapment surface and time of exposure, the possibility of site selection, the defined initial concentrations of pollutants in lichens and general greater efficiency of samples collection, the exclusion of possible contamination deriving from root uptake, which is probable when we use dust fall jars or bulk samplers; and this method is cheap and effective [3]. The biggest drawback of the bag method is that the collection efficiency for various contaminants is not defined. This was studied for mosses [6]. Climate and other environmental conditions may influence the results of biomonitoring with lichens

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Conclusion