All along the watchtower: Larval dragonflies are promising biological sentinels for monitoring methylmercury contamination

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Humans have used other organisms to detect environmental danger for centuries (e.g., the canary in the coal mine). The use of “biosentinels” has developed and expanded to become a mainstay for monitoring environmental contaminants like methylmercury, a pervasive and largely anthropogenic neurotoxin. Biosentinels provide insights on how and where contaminants are entering and moving through aquatic food webs. Many water bodies in the Great Lakes region, including those in national park units, have fish-consumption advisories because of the atmospheric deposition of mercury and its conversion into methylmercury, which can biomagnify. For many years young yellow perch served as the principal biosentinel for monitoring methylmercury. Resent research shows that the diverse assemblage of dragonflies in this region can provide an additional suite of biosentinels, complementing the use of perch among water bodies with fish and expanding the reach of methylmercury monitoring to include fishless ecosystems (e.g., small ponds and wetlands).

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)70-73
Number of pages4
JournalPark Science
Volume31
Issue number1
StatePublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Biosentinels
  • Contaminant monitoring
  • Dragonfly larvae
  • Fish-consumption advisories
  • Methylmercury

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nature and Landscape Conservation
  • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

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