title: Assessment of drift as a recovery endpoint in aquatic snails exposed to ammonia.
abstract: Pollutants are an important factor that causes among others drift (i.e. downstream transport of aquatic organisms in the current) in aquatic invertebrates. However, drift response is taxon-specific, which necessitates the investigation of a wide variety of taxa. Additionally, no information on the effects of the common toxicant ammonia on this endpoint is available. Our study focuses on the effects of exposure and post-exposure to ammonia on the drift of the common aquatic mollusc: Potamopyrgus antipodarum (Hydrobiidae, Mollusca). The effects of ammonia were tested using percentage of drift and stay time (i.e. time that animals stay without dislodging), which were monitored during 2 days of exposure and 2 days of post-exposure in a laboratory stream microcosm. Drift was observed at concentration 4.3 times lower than the LC50 48 h to this species. Our results show that ammonia increases the percentage of drift and caused a reduction in stay time of the exposed animals, both endpoints recover to their normal values after 24 h of post-exposure to ammonia.
authors.affiliation: Unidad Docente de Ecología, Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Alcalá, 28871 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain, aafernandez1976@yahoo.es.
authors.forename: Álvaro
authors.initials: Á
authors.lastname: Alonso
authors.forename: Julio A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Camargo
mesh_terms: D000641:Ammonia / Q000633:toxicity*; D000818:Animals; D017753:Ecosystem; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D045483:Rivers / Q000737:chemistry; D012908:Snails / Q000502:physiology*; D014872:Water Movements; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000633:toxicity*
chemical_list: D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical; D000641:Ammonia