The myriad of stressors present in coastal and estuarine ecosystems can in combination cause responses in wildlife that are difficult to predict using traditional experimental approaches designed to evaluate single response variables. Major abiotic stressors that can enhance the effects of anthropogenic factors such as pollution are fluctuations in temperature and salinity regimes. Both temperature and salinity are expected to become more variable as global climate change progesses. Work conducted in the euryhaline fish, Menidia beryllina, and the decapod, Callinectes sapidus, demonstrates that responses to current common-use pesticides are sometimes dependent upon the temperature or salinity at which organisms are exposed. Warmer temperatures associated with global climate change contributed to altered sex ratios, lowered larval survival, increased deformities, and altered gene expression in Menidia beryllina exposed to environmentally-detected levels of bifenthrin (1 ng/L). These effects persisted across multiple generations. In juvenile blue crabs, C. sapidus, overall growth (weight and carapace width) and expression of the gene for the molting hormone receptor differed according to salinity in crab juveniles exposed to low part per billion concentrations of fipronil. These concentrations were equivalent to those of a fipronil photodegradate (fipronil desulfinyl) detected in the eggs and embryos of wild female blue crabs. These results along with findings from other studies indicate that abiotic factors must be considered when evaluating pollutant impacts relevant to coastal ecosystems. Addressing these realities while quantifying responses in a way that accounts for the complex interactions occurring between abiotic parameters and biological responses is a major challenge now faced by chemists and toxicologists, particularly in the context of climate change.

Multiple stressors in coastal ecosystems: Measuring responses across biological scales and generations in model estuarine organisms

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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