Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY
Volume 30, Issue 3, Pages 682-691Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/etc.425
Keywords
Cholinesterase; Pseudacris sierra; Sediment; Sierra Nevada; Tadpole
Categories
Funding
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) [DW14989008]
- U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [P30ES00210]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Atmospherically deposited pesticides from the intensively cultivated Central Valley of California, USA, have been implicated as a cause for population declines of several amphibian species, with the strongest evidence for the frogs Rana muscosa and Rana sierrae at high elevation in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Previous studies on these species have relied on correlations between frog population status and either a metric for amount of upwind pesticide use or limited measurements of pesticide concentrations in the field. The present study tested the hypothesis that pesticide concentrations are negatively correlated with frog population status (i.e., fraction of suitable water bodies occupied within 2 km of a site) by measuring pesticide concentrations in multiple media twice at 28 sites at high elevation in the southern Sierra Nevada. Media represented were air, sediment, and Pseudacris sierra tadpoles. Total cholinesterase (ChE), which has been used as an indicator for organophosphorus and carbamate pesticide exposure, was also measured in P. sierra tadpoles. Results do not support the pesticide-site occupancy hypothesis. Among 46 pesticide compounds analyzed, nine were detected with >= 30% frequency, representing both historically and currently used pesticides. In stepwise regressions with a chemical metric and linear distance from the Central Valley as predictor variables, no negative association was found between frog population status and the concentration of any pesticide or tadpole ChE activity level. By contrast, frog population status showed a strong positive relationship with linear distance from the Valley, a pattern that is consistent with a general west-to-east spread across central California of the amphibian disease chytridiomycosis observed by other researchers. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2011:30:682-691. (C) 2011 SETAC
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available