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. 2021 Mar 7;11(9):4046-4057.
doi: 10.1002/ece3.7305. eCollection 2021 May.

Eutrophic status influences the impact of pesticide mixtures and predation on Daphnia pulex populations

Talles Bruno Oliveira Dos Anjos  1   2 , Francesco Polazzo  1 , Alba Arenas-Sánchez  1 , Laura Cherta  1 , Roberto Ascari  3 , Sonia Migliorati  3 , Marco Vighi  1 , Andreu Rico  1   4
Affiliations

Eutrophic status influences the impact of pesticide mixtures and predation on Daphnia pulex populations

Talles Bruno Oliveira Dos Anjos et al. Ecol Evol. .

Abstract

Pesticides, nutrients, and ecological stressors such as competition or predation co-occur in freshwater ecosystems impacted by agriculture. The extent to which combinations of these stressors affect aquatic populations and the role of nutrients availability in modulating these responses requires further understanding. In this study, we assessed how pesticides affecting different taxonomic groups and predation influence the response of Daphnia pulex populations under different trophic conditions. An outdoor experiment was designed following a factorial design, with the insecticide chlorpyrifos, the herbicide diuron, and the predation by Notonecta sp. individuals as key stressors. The single impact of each of these stressors, and their binary and tertiary combinations, was evaluated on D. pulex abundance and population structure under mesotrophic and eutrophic conditions for 21 days. Data were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models estimated by means of a novel Bayesian shrinkage technique. Our study shows a significant influence of each of the evaluated stressors on D. pulex abundance; however, the impacts of the herbicide and predation were lower under eutrophic conditions as compared to the mesotrophic ones. We found that binary stressor interactions were generally additive in the mesotrophic scenario, except for the herbicide-predation combination, which resulted in synergistic effects. The impacts of the binary stressor combinations in the eutrophic scenario were classified as antagonistic, except for the insecticide-herbicide combination, which was additive. The tertiary interaction resulted in significant effects on some sampling dates; however, these were rather antagonistic and resembled the most important binary stressor combination in each trophic scenario. Our study shows that the impact of pesticides on freshwater populations depends on the predation pressure, and demonstrates that the combined effect of pesticides and ecological stressors is influenced by the food availability and organism fitness related to the trophic status of freshwater ecosystems.

Keywords: Bayesian shrinkage; eutrophication; multiple stressors; pesticides; predation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors of this study declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Mesocosm facilities (left) and experimental setup (right). Biodiversity lagoon used to fill in the mesocosms (a), outdoor mesocosms (b), mesotrophic mesocosms (c), eutrophic mesocosms (d), detail of experimental cages containing Daphnia pulex alone and Daphnia pulex with one individual of Notonectidae sp (e).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Mean concentrations of total inorganic nitrogen (a) and phophorous as ortho‐phosphate (b) measured in the mesotrophic and eutrophic mesocosms during the experiment. Error bars indicate one standard deviation
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Daphnia pulex population abundance as response to the single and combined effects of the evaluated stressors in the mesotrophic (a) and eutrophic (b) scenario. I, insecticide = chlorpyrifos; H, herbicide = diuron; P, predation. Raw data are provided in Table S6
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