A non-invasive technique for determining metal concentrations in live turtles
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1
Faculty of Veterinary Science, Production Animal Studies, South Africa
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2
James Cook University, College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences, Australia
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3
Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, Australia
Exposure to metals is an integral part of turtle health and has major public health implications. Sea Turtles form an integral part of the tropical marine ecosystem and are closely associated with the Great Barrier Reef. They are also an important part of the cultural heritage of the region and a traditional food source for indigenous communities.
This study examined a novel method for sampling live turtles (Fig. 1) and tests the hypothesis, based on terrestrial animal studies, that shell concentrations of heavy metals can be correlated to organ concentrations thus providing conservationists and researchers with an important tool for doing more extensive monitoring and surveillance work. The tool can be applied worldwide and has a wide range of applications that could revolutionise turtle studies.
Fifty trace and ultra-trace elements were screened in shell, liver and kidney samples from 43 turtles collected at three time intervals along the Northern Great Barrier Reef (Cleveland Bay and Raine Island) in Australia, using a Varian 820-MS Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS).
The data was stored in Excel 2010, where descriptive statistical tests were carried out. More advanced statistical analysis was carried out using the statistical package NCSS (Hintze, J., 2012. NCSS 10. NCSS, LLC. Kaysville, Utah, USA. www.ncss.com.). These analysis included correlation matrixes to determine the relationship between shell values and liver and kidney concentrations of metals as well as regression models. Because of the variability in the data and few published “normal” values for turtles in the region, stochastic models were created using the software package @Risk (Palisade, USA). This allowed the creation of distribution functions to represent the values within which normal ranges can be considered and the probability of these values occurring.
Results of 43 turtles were compared to 22 turtles previously sampled in the Torres Straits, with permission from Queensland’s Department of Environment and Resource Management, for reference purposes. Of the 50 elements tested 23 had measurable concentrations that could be compared. There was some variability between cohorts of turtles with respect to correlations between shell and liver and kidney elemental concentrations. Elements that showed consistently medium to large positive correlations between shell and liver were B, Ba, Co, Mn, Pb, V, Zn; between shell and kidney were B, Ba, Co, Se, Ti, V, Zn and between liver and kidney were B, Ba, Co, Cr, Ga, Mn, Ni. Rb, Se, Ti, V, Zn. This probably reflects the physiology of turtles with some elements more likely to accumulate in the shell.
The study provides sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation into the use of shell as a biomarker for exposure of turtles to environmental elements, including heavy metals. Thus providing a non-harmful tool that can be used by scientists to sample turtles for surveillance and public health purposes.
Keywords:
Turtles,
heavy metals,
Sampling technique,
non-invasive,
suveillance,
Trace Elements
Conference:
AquaEpi I - 2016, Oslo, Norway, 20 Sep - 22 Sep, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Oral
Topic:
Aquatic Animal Epidemiology
Citation:
Gummow
B,
Hu
Y,
Bell
I and
Ariel
E
(2016). A non-invasive technique for determining metal concentrations in live turtles.
Front. Vet. Sci.
Conference Abstract:
AquaEpi I - 2016.
doi: 10.3389/conf.FVETS.2016.02.00025
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Received:
12 May 2016;
Published Online:
14 Sep 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Bruce Gummow, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Production Animal Studies, Onderstepoort, 0110, South Africa, bruce.gummow@up.ac.za