Abstract
Environmental change poses a devastating risk to human and environmental health. Rapid assessment of water conditions is necessary for monitoring, evaluating, and addressing this global health danger. Sentinels or biological monitors can be deployed in the field using minimal resources to detect water quality changes in real time, quickly and cheaply. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are ideal sentinels for detecting environmental changes due to their biomedical tool kit, widespread geographic distribution, and well-characterized phenotypic responses to environmental disturbances. Here, we demonstrate the utility of zebrafish sentinels by characterizing phenotypic differences in wild zebrafish between two field sites in India. Site 1 was a rural environment with flowing water, low-hypoxic conditions, minimal human-made debris, and high iron and lead concentrations. Site 2 was an urban environment with still water, hypoxic conditions, plastic pollution, and high arsenic, iron, and chromium concentrations. We found that zebrafish from Site 2 were smaller, more cohesive, and less active than Site 1 fish. We also found sexually dimorphic body shapes within the Site 2, but not the Site 1, population. Advancing zebrafish sentinel research and development will enable rapid detection, evaluation, and response to emerging global health threats.
Highlights
Environmental change is rapidly accelerating, producing profound changes in natural environments [1,2,3,4,5]
To assess phenotypic differences between these populations, we used three classes of endpoints: Toxics 2021, 9, 165 body shape, social behavior, and activity. We propose that these three endpoint classes monitored in wild zebrafish can be used as indicators to detect site differences to rapidly characterize the impacts of environmental change
We compartial warps of fish using PCA and found that the first two axes explained 74.69% of the pared these morphometric differences across levels of Population and Sex using MANOVA
Summary
Environmental change is rapidly accelerating, producing profound changes in natural environments [1,2,3,4,5]. Aquatic ecosystems are changing at alarming rates due to anthropogenic influences including temperature, carbonization, acidification, flow, and pollution [6,7,8,9,10,11]. These changes produce devastating effects on ecosystems [12,13,14] and human health [15,16,17]. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) can serve as effective biological monitors for site differences because of their widespread distribution [22] and technical innovation [23]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
