Chapters authored
Heavy Metal Pollution as a Biodiversity Threat
Heavy metals exert their toxic effects through different mechanisms. Lately, increasing attention has been focused on understanding the long-term ecological effects of chronically exposed populations and communities and their consequences to the ecosystem. The long-term exposure to heavy metals in the environment represents a threat to wild populations, affecting communities and putting ecosystem integrity at risk. Therefore, this type of exposure represents a threat to biodiversity. In the field, metal exposure is generally characterized by low doses and chronic exposures. This type of exposure exerts alterations across levels of biological organization. Distribution and abundance of populations, the community structure and the ecosystem dynamics may be altered. This chapter will focus on how chronically metal exposures in the field affect negatively populations and communities becoming a threat to biodiversity. Also, attention is put on the tools that enable to characterize and analyze the detrimental effects of heavy metal exposure on wild populations. Hence, the use and development of biomarkers in ecotoxicology will be discussed.
Part of the book: Heavy Metals
The Use of Biosensors for Biomonitoring Environmental Metal Pollution
The use of biosensors for biomonitoring environmental health has gained much attention in the last decades. The environment is continuously loaded with xenobiotics released by anthropogenic activities that pollute ecosystems, putting their integrity at risk. Therefore, there is an urgent need to study the negative effects of xenobiotics, specifically chemical agents. Biosensors or organisms that integrate exposure to pollutants in their environment and which respond in some measurable and predictable way are useful tools to study the extent of chemical pollution and its consequences across levels of biological organization. Among chemical pollutants, heavy metals are among the most toxic elements to nearly all living organisms. Wildlife is chronically exposed to complex metal mixtures in which effects on ecosystem health are difficult to assess. Therefore, different organisms may serve as biosensors to estimate detrimental effects of metal pollution. In this chapter, we will analyze bacteria, small mammals, some plant species, and lichens as biosensors for environmental metal pollution. Also, we will assess the importance of using different biomarkers on biosensors.
Part of the book: Biosensors for Environmental Monitoring