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Complex interactions between climate change and toxicants: evidence that temperature variability increases sensitivity to cadmium

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Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that global climate change will have significant impacts on environmental conditions including potential effects on sensitivity of organisms to environmental contaminants. The objective of this study was to test the climate-induced toxicant sensitivity (CITS) hypothesis in which acclimation to altered climate parameters increases toxicant sensitivity. Adult Physa pomilia snails were acclimated to a near optimal 22 °C or a high-normal 28 °C for 28 days. After 28 days, snails from each temperature group were challenged with either low (150 μg/L) or high (300 μg/L) cadmium at each temperature (28 or 22 °C). In contrast to the CITS hypothesis, we found that acclimation temperature did not have a strong influence on cadmium sensitivity except at the high cadmium test concentration where snails acclimated to 28 °C were more cadmium tolerant. However, snails that experienced a switch in temperature for the cadmium challenge, regardless of the switch direction, were the most sensitive to cadmium. Within the snails that were switched between temperatures, snails acclimated at 28 °C and then exposed to high cadmium at 22 °C exhibited significantly greater mortality than those snails acclimated to 22 °C and then exposed to cadmium at 28 °C. Our results point to the importance of temperature variability in increasing toxicant sensitivity but also suggest a potentially complex cost of temperature acclimation. Broadly, the type of temporal stressor exposures we simulated may reduce overall plasticity in responses to stress ultimately rendering populations more vulnerable to adverse effects.

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Acknowledgments

DAK would like to thank Texas Tech University, The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) and the Conchologists of America for funding. This manuscript was improved with helpful comments from two anonymous reviewers.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Toxicology, The Institute of Environmental and Human Health, Texas Tech University, 1207 Gilbert Drive, Lubbock, TX, 79416, USA

    David A. Kimberly & Christopher J. Salice

  2. Department of Biology, Westminster College, 215 Meldrum Science Center, 1840 S 1300 East, Salt Lake City, UT, 84105, USA

    David A. Kimberly

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  1. David A. Kimberly
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Correspondence to David A. Kimberly.

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Kimberly, D.A., Salice, C.J. Complex interactions between climate change and toxicants: evidence that temperature variability increases sensitivity to cadmium. Ecotoxicology 23, 809–817 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-014-1221-y

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