PT13 Aquatic Ecotoxicology I
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Tuesday
(PT185) Development of Korean indigenous benthic amphipods as a sediment toxicity testing organisms.
Lee, J.-S.1, Lee, K.-T.1, Kim, C.-K.1, Kim, D.-H.1, Park, K.-H.1, Park, G.-S.2, 1 Institute of Environmental Protection & Safety, NeoEnBiz Co., 549-11 (Rm 201), Banpo-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul, Korea2 West Sea Fisheries Research Institute, NFRDI, 707 Eulwang-dong, Joong-gu, Incheon, Korea
ABSTRACT- A series of experiments was conducted to select adequate test species and to determine optimal test conditions for developing a sediment toxicity test protocol using indigenous benthic amphipods. Amphipods inhabited in Korean coastal environments such as Mandibulophoxus mai, Corophium acherusicum, Haustorioides koreanus and H. indivisus were incubated in 3 different sediment types to evaluate their avoiding behavior and ability to survive with the existence of sediment substrates. Results showed that M. mai and C. acherusicum were better associated with various sediment types. The tolerant limits to other important physico-chemical factors such as temperature, salinity and ammonia and also sensitivities to reference toxicant and field contaminated sediments were investigated for M. mai and C. acherusicum. These amphipods were tolerable to the relatively wide range of sediment grain size (sand to mud), salinity (10-30 psu) and ammonia (<50 ppm) and they were relatively more sensitive to Cd, the reference toxicant, when comparing to most standard test species used in other countries. Application to field contaminated sediment showed that sensitivity could vary among species due to the inter-specific variation of inherent tolerance to specific pollutants. Overall results of this first attempt to develop an amphipod sediment toxicity test protocol indicated that M. mai and C. acherusicum could be used to assess the biological adverse effect of contaminated sediments following the further evaluation encompassing various ecological and toxicological investigation concerning the adequacy of these species as test organisms and the testing method standardization.
Key words: amphipod, sediment toxicity test