Parasites help brine shrimp cope with arsenic habitat contamination

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/p-phb022516.php

Public Release: 3-Mar-2016
Parasites help brine shrimp cope with arsenic habitat contamination
PLOS

Artemia (the scientific name of the small crustacean that is also commonly known as 'sea monkey') is famous for being able to live in extreme environments and has become a model organism used to test the toxicity of chemicals in water. In addition, Artemia can produce dormant eggs, known as cysts, that can be stored for long periods and hatched on demand to provide a convenient form of live feed for the seafood industry, and 2000 tonnes of Artemia cysts per year are sold worldwide.

Marta Sánchez and Andy Green, both from the Estación Biológica de Doñana in Seville, Spain, and colleagues are interested in environmental parasitology, i.e., the study of interactions between parasites and pollution or climate change. Artemia is an intermediate host for tapeworms that eventually infect water birds such as flamingos and grebes, and the researchers had previously shown that tapeworm infection can change the shrimps' physiology and behavior.

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Both samples were used for toxicity testing with arsenic, a pollutant that is commonly found in concentrations considered harmful in the estuaries where the shrimp came from. To their surprise, the researchers found that infected shrimp were consistently more resistant to arsenic than uninfected ones. This was true not only at 25 degrees Celsius (the temperature under which both samples were tested), but also at 29 degrees (tested on some of the shrimp from the larger May sample). Overall, the 4-degree increase--consistent with current climate-change predictions for the change in mean temperature--made the shrimp more vulnerable to arsenic toxicity.

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