M. Gustafsson et al., Benthic foraminiferal tolerance to tri-n-butyltin (TBT) pollution in an experimental mesocosm, MAR POLL B, 40(12), 2000, pp. 1072-1075
Tri-n-butyltin (TBT) has been used in the marine environment as a toxic age
nt in antifouling paints, but unfortunately it also has negative effects on
non-target organisms in the environment. In this study, intact coastal sed
iment was exposed for seven months to three levels of TBT corresponding to
nominal additions of 0.00, 0.02 and 2.00 nmol TBT per g dry sediment. This
paper presents the first attempt to find out how living benthic foraminifer
a respond to TBT, Increased foraminiferal abundance in the 0.02 nmol mesoco
sm could be an effect of decreased predation (competition), since other rep
resentatives of meiofauna and macrofauna tended to be less tolerant to TBT,
Increasing toxicity in the most contaminated mesocosm group (2.00 nmol) re
sulted in a less abundant foraminiferal population suggesting that TBT affe
cts the foraminiferal community. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights
reserved.