Concentrations of herbicides in our aquatic ecosystems increase more and more. Among these, the herbicide glyphosate is the most common one. This ecotoxicological study was performed in order to examine the toxic effect of the herbicide glyphosate on aquatic invertebrates. Odonata were selected as study organisms in order to serve as bio-indicators of environmental contamination. Two populations, each of two species (Erythromma najas and Libellula quadrimaculata) were collected from four different locations, to study inter-specific differences, as well as, differences among populations within a species, in response to herbicide exposure. The experiment was conducted for 15 days in a 2 x 4 factorial design with 4 replicates (n = 32). The most common brand of weed-killer ‘Roundup’ containing 7.2 gL-1 of glyphosate) was used as source of glyphosate. Glyphosate was applied at a concentration of 7.6 mgL-1 in the experiment equalling the high end of environmentally relevant concentrations of glyphosate present in contaminated shallow waters. Response variables measured were larval survival, growth and activity. The results showed that glyphosate exposure reduced the survival of the larvae, but the magnitude of the glyphosate effects depended on species identity of the larvae and varied also with population within species. This study clearly shows that herbicide effects on invertebrate fitness depends on species identity and may even vary within species from different populations, possibly due to evolved resistance of random genetic variations between populations or due to random genetic variation between populations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-36163 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Mansoor, Ramla |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för ekonomi, teknik och naturvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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