Abstract
The Elizabeth River system is an estuary in southeastern Virginia, surrounded by the towns of Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach. The river has played important roles in U.S. history and has been the location of various military and industrial activities. These activities have been the source of chemical contamination in this aquatic system. Important industries, until the 1990s, included wood treatment plants that used creosote, an oil-derived product that is rich in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). These plants left a legacy of PAH pollution in the river, and in particular Atlantic Wood Industries is a designated Superfund site now undergoing remediation. Numerous studies examined the distribution of PAH in the river and impacts on resident fauna. This review focuses on how a small estuarine fish with a limited home range, Fundulus heteroclitus (Atlantic killifish or mummichog), has responded to this pollution. While in certain areas of the river this species has clearly been impacted, as evidenced by elevated rates of liver cancer, some subpopulations, notably the one associated with the Atlantic Wood Industries site, displayed a remarkable ability to resist the marked effects PAH have on the embryonic development of fish. This review provides evidence of how pollutants have acted as evolutionary agents, causing changes in ecosystems potentially lasting longer than the pollutants themselves. Mechanisms underlying this evolved resistance, as well as mechanisms underlying the effects of PAH on embryonic development, are also described. The review concludes with a description of ongoing and promising efforts to restore this historic American river.
Highlights
Much of the research concerned with ecological effects of environmental pollution in natural systems has involved lab dose-response studies to determine environmental concentrations that produce negative impacts on variables such as growth, reproduction, and survival in representative or model species that may parlay into population-level effects
The chemistry of coal-derived creosote is dominated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which comprise the class of chemical contaminants that have been, and continue to be, of greatest concern in the Elizabeth River (Clark et al 2013; Huggett, Bender, and Unger 1987; U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 1994)
This allows for dimerization with the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) nuclear transporter (ARNT) that forms the transcriptionally active complex that binds to xenobiotic response elements (XRE) and thereby upregulates the transcription of a number of proteins including enzymes involved in biotransformation, indicated here, as well as the AHR repressor (AHRR) that provides negative feedback of the pathway
Summary
The Elizabeth River is a tidal estuary in southeastern Virginia (Figure 1) This river consists of the Western, Eastern, and Southern Branches and the Lafayette River that flow through the towns of Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach—important communities in the Hampton Roads region of Tidewater Virginia. After confluence of three branches, the river enters the James River near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, approximately 30 km north of its connection with the ICW (Figure 1). During World War II the Norfolk Naval Shipyard served as the primary location for ship repairs—totaling 6,850 vessels
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