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Combined exposure to parasite and pesticide causes increased mortality in the water flea Daphnia

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Abstract

Organisms are exposed to multiple biotic and abiotic environmental stressors, which can influence the dynamics of individual populations and communities. Populations may also genetically adapt to both natural (e.g. disease) and anthropogenic (e.g. chemical pollution) stress. In the present study, we studied fitness consequences of exposure to both a parasite (i.e. biotic) and a pesticide (i.e. abiotic) for the water flea Daphnia. In addition, we investigated whether these fitness consequences change through time as a population evolves. Thus, we exposed Daphnia magna clones, hatched from dormant eggs isolated from different time layers of a natural dormant egg bank, to the parasite Pasteuria ramosa and the insecticide diazinon in a multifactorial experiment. While our experimental treatments for unknown reasons failed to induce disease symptoms in the Daphnia, we did observe a reduced survival of D. magna when simultaneously exposed to both the parasite and the pesticide. No increased mortality upon exposure to individual stressors was observed. We did not observe an evolutionary change in fitness response of the Daphnia clones hatched from different time horizons upon exposure to stressors.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Ellen Decaestecker for providing the hatchlings, several members of the Luc De Meester’s group for their help during the experiment and Andreas Kretschmann for hel** verifying the diazinon concentration. The manuscript improved by comments from Andreas Bruder, Christoph Tellenbach, Mat Seymour and two anonymous reviewers. This research was funded by the ETH Board (CCES-GEDIHAP), a Mobility Support from Eawag for CB and the KU Leuven Research Fund project PF/2010/07. MJ received a fellowship of the IWT, Flanders, while KP is a postdoctoral researcher with the FWO, Flanders.

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  1. Claudia C. Buser

    Present address: School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, 1142, New Zealand

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aquatic Ecology, Eawag, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Claudia C. Buser & Piet Spaak

  2. Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Universitätsstrasse 16, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland

    Claudia C. Buser & Piet Spaak

  3. Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Ch. Deberiotstraat 32, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Mieke Jansen, Kevin Pauwels & Luc De Meester

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Correspondence to Claudia C. Buser.

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Buser, C.C., Jansen, M., Pauwels, K. et al. Combined exposure to parasite and pesticide causes increased mortality in the water flea Daphnia . Aquat Ecol 46, 261–268 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-012-9397-9

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