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Trace Element Concentrations in European Pond Turtles (Emys orbicularis) from Brenne Natural Park, France

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Héloïse Guillot at Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé
Héloïse Guillot
  • Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé
Xavier Bonnet at French National Centre for Scientific Research
Xavier Bonnet
Paco C. Bustamante at La Rochelle Université
Paco C. Bustamante
Carine Churlaud at La Rochelle Université
Carine Churlaud
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Abstract and Figures

We assessed trace elements concentration in European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) from Brenne Natural Park (France). We sampled road-killed turtles (N = 46) to measure the concentrations of 4 non-essential (Ag, Cd, Hg, and Pb) and 10 essential (As, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Se, V, and Zn) elements in muscle, skin, liver and claws. Body size or sex did not influence the concentrations of most elements; except for Hg (liver, skin and claws) and Zn (muscle) which increased with body size. We found relatively high concentrations of Hg and Zn, possibly linked to fish farming. This result deserves future investigations to evaluate possible ecotoxicological effects on E. orbicularis.
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Vol:.(1234567890)
Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (2018) 101:300–304
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00128-018-2376-7
1 3
Trace Element Concentrations inEuropean Pond Turtles (Emys
orbicularis) fromBrenne Natural Park, France
HéloïseGuillot1· XavierBonnet1· PacoBustamante2· CarineChurlaud2· JacquesTrotignon3· FrançoisBrischoux1
Received: 25 May 2018 / Accepted: 2 June 2018 / Published online: 8 June 2018
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract
We assessed trace elements concentration in European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) from Brenne Natural Park (France). We
sampled road-killed turtles (N = 46) to measure the concentrations of 4 non-essential (Ag, Cd, Hg, and Pb) and 10 essential
(As, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Se, V, and Zn) elements in muscle, skin, liver and claws. Body size or sex did not influence the
concentrations of most elements; except for Hg (liver, skin and claws) and Zn (muscle) which increased with body size. We
found relatively high concentrations of Hg and Zn, possibly linked to fish farming. This result deserves future investigations
to evaluate possible ecotoxicological effects on E. orbicularis.
Keywords Trace elements· Contamination· Wetlands· Emys orbicularis
Wetlands are important habitats for biodiversity, yet they
are among the most endangered ecosystems in the world,
suffering from a drastic reduction of their surface and from
a degradation of water quality (Schneider etal. 2017).
Monitoring environmental contaminations in wetlands is
difficult because they are connected to complex and large
hydric networks composed by both surface and underground
waters. As a consequence, the connectivity of aquatic sys-
tems can induce contamination in areas that otherwise
appear unscathed from direct sources of pollution (Baker
1992). Among environmental contaminants, trace elements
are well-known for their ability to enter and move across
aquatic environments (Agarwal 2009). These elements com-
prise both non-essential elements (that exhibit high toxic-
ity at low concentrations) and essential elements (that may
become toxic when they exceed normal levels) (Förstner and
Wittman 1981). Overall, trace elements represent a threat
to aquatic ecosystems because of their high toxicity, persis-
tence, bioaccumulation in organisms and biomagnification
across trophic levels (Agarwal 2009).
Freshwater turtles are suitable organisms to survey con-
tamination levels in complex aquatic ecosystems (Overmann
and Krajicek 1995; Ayub etal. 2001; Nagle etal. 2001;
Bergeron etal. 2007; Yu etal. 2011; Malik etal. 2013; Yad-
ollahvand etal. 2014; Allender etal. 2015; Slimani etal.
2018). First, they are widely distributed and occupy a variety
of habitats. Second, they have a long life expectancy, which
allows studying bioaccumulation processes and long-term
trends of contaminants. Finally, most species are sedentary
and provide information on the contamination at a precise
location.
In this study, we used opportunistic sampling of road-
killed European pond turtles (Emys orbicularis) to study
trace element contamination of one of the largest French
wetlands: the Brenne Natural Park. The goals of our descrip-
tive study were to document the concentrations of 4 non-
essential trace elements (Ag, Cd, Hg, and Pb) and 10 essen-
tial trace elements (As, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Se, V, and
Zn) in the muscle, skin, liver and claws of E. orbicularis;
and to investigate the relationship between the concentra-
tions of these elements and the sex and the size of the turtles.
* François Brischoux
francois.brischoux@gmail.com
1 Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, CEBC UMR 7372
CNRS- Université de La Rochelle, 79360VilliersenBois,
France
2 Littoral Environnement et Sociétés (LIENSs), UMR 7266
CNRS-Université de La Rochelle, 2 rue Olympe de Gouges,
17000LaRochelle, France
3 Réserve Naturelle Nationale de Chérine, Maison de la Nature
et de la Réserve, 36290Saint-Michel-en-Brenne, France
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... La partie à venir propose de s'attacher à l'observation des habitats des adultes, mais sous un angle nouveau, à travers des thèmes qui n'ont pour le moment pas été explorés. En effet, la population de Cistude d'Europe en Brenne est suivie depuis de très nombreuses années (Pailler, 1909;Rollinat, 1934) puis, plus récemment, par des protocoles de piégeage et de marquage des individus depuis les années 80 (Lescure, 1982;Servan, 1986Servan, , 1988Servan, , 1991Servan, , 2001Servan, , 2002Servan, , 2003Owen-Jones & Thienpont, 2011;Owen-Jones, 2015;Owen-Jones et al., 2016) (Biot, 2017), et l'étude de certains polluants (Guillot, 2017;Guillot et al., 2018). (Litzgus, Bolton & Schulte-Hostedde, 2008). ...
... Les sources cryptiques peuvent compliquer davantage notre compréhension de l'étendue de la contamination par le mercure. Par exemple, il a été récemment démontré que la pisciculture est responsable du transfert du mercure marin dans des zones qui semblent superficiellement indemnes d'autres sources de pollution (Hansson et al., 2017;Guillot et al., 2018;Lemaire et al., 2018). ...
... L'utilité des tortues d'eau douce en tant que bioindicateurs de la contamination par le mercure a déjà été démontrée chez cette espèce (Guillot et al., 2018) et chez d'autres espèces (Bergeron et al., 2007;Burger et al., 2009;Schneider et al., 2009Schneider et al., , 2010Turnquist et al., 2011;Hopkins et al., 2013b;Slimani et al., 2018). Conformément à ces études, nos recherches indiquent également que l'analyse des griffes d'Emys orbicularis est une technique non invasive utile pour surveiller la contamination par le mercure chez un grand nombre d'individus. ...
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... Accuracy and reproducibility of the method were tested using TORT À3. The recoveries of total metals were in good agreement with recently published research articles dealing with health risk assessment of trace metals or similar areas (Caron et al., 2018;Cipro et al., 2018;Cochran et al., 2018;Fletcher et al., 2019;Gao et al., 2019;Guillot et al., 2018;Lischka et al., 2020;Tran et al., 2020;Varol et al., 2018;Xu et al., 2019). ...
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... The European pond turtle is listed as "near threatened" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened species (Tortoise & Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group 1996). Pollution by trace metal elements has been studied in E. orbicularis (Namroodi et al. 2017;Guillot et al. 2018;Beau et al. 2019), but data are lacking on burdens of POPs. ...
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