Spatial patterns and environmental factors related to arsenic bioaccumulation in boreal freshwater fish
This article has been corrected.
VIEW CORRECTIONPublication: Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
2 February 2023
Abstract
To better understand the spatial patterns in arsenic (As) bioaccumulation in freshwater systems, we investigated ecological, physical, and chemical factors associated with total arsenic concentrations ([As]) in lacustrine and riverine fish across Ontario, Canada, using a dataset of 3200 fish across 152 waterbodies. Assembled data of water chemistry, landscape characteristics, and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in muscle tissue were then used to assess factors related to As bioaccumulation. Results show that [As] were generally low across most species and waterbodies (i.e., <1 µg·g−1 wet in many inland fish). However, fish from northern coastal rivers had up to 23-fold higher [As] when compared with fish from landlocked sites. As concentrations increased slightly with the proportion of pelagic carbon in a fish's diet, although relationships varied among species and sites. Furthermore, principal component scores, representing landscape and water chemistry variables, were related to [As] in fish, but these relationships varied among species. These results will help improve the efficacy of fish contaminant monitoring by further identifying key physical and ecological variables related to higher [As] in fish.
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Information
Published In
Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
Volume 80 • Number 3 • March 2023
Pages: 628 - 641
Article versions
History
Received: 25 May 2022
Accepted: 5 December 2022
Accepted manuscript online: 19 December 2022
Version of record online: 2 February 2023
Copyright
© 2022 Authors Kluke, Lescord, Lock, and Gunn, and The Crown. Permission for reuse (free in most cases) can be obtained from copyright.com.
Data Availability Statement
Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks fish contaminant data can be accessed through the following:
Fish Contaminant Monitoring Program
Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks
Phone: 416-327-6816 or 1-800-820-2716
Email: [email protected]
All other inquiries into primary research data can be directed to the corresponding author.
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Author Contributions
Conceptualization: CK, GLL, BWK, AL, SB, JMG
Data curation: CK, GLL, TAJ, BWK, SB
Formal analysis: CK, GLL
Funding acquisition: GLL, JMG
Investigation: CK, GLL
Methodology: CK, GLL, TAJ, BWK, AL, SB, JMG
Project administration: CK, GLL, SB, JMG
Resources: GLL, TAJ, BWK, SB, JMG
Supervision: GLL, JMG
Validation: GLL, TAJ
Visualization: CK, GLL
Writing – original draft: CK, GLL
Writing – review & editing: CK, GLL, TAJ, BWK, AL, SB, JMG
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests related to this work.
Funding Information
Funding was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through their Collaborative Research and Development (CRD, partnered with DeBeers Canada) and Discovery grants (JMG, grant numbers CRDPJ533736-18 and RGPIN-2016-04376, respectively) and MITACS Accelerate (Lescord, Application Ref. IT13105, Funding Request Ref. FR3305).
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Calvin Kluke, Gretchen L. Lescord, Thomas A. Johnston, Brian W. Kielstra, Alan Lock, Satyendra Bhavsar, and John M. Gunn. 2023. Spatial patterns and environmental factors related to arsenic bioaccumulation in boreal freshwater fish. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
80(3): 628-641. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2022-0106
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