Zeitschrift für Ozeanographie und Meeresforschung
Offener Zugang

Abstrakt

Physiological, Immunological, Genotoxic and Histopathological Biomarker Responses of Molluscs to Heavy Metal and Water-Quality Parameter Exposures: A Critical Review

Ogunola OS

Aquatic molluscs are ideal invertebrate model systems for monitoring environmental quality and toxicology. However, they are subject to a wide variety of stressors including the heavy metals, cadmium, arsenic, and adverse water quality conditions, thermal, hypoxia that can have significant effects on host physiology, biochemical and histology. When acting singly or in combination, both stressors represent a serious threat to the health of the invertebrate communities by enhancing the production of reactive oxygen species, ROS, which can cause oxidative alterations. They have been proposed and reported to cause significant ecological damage to the mollusc population through a reduction in scope of growth leading to overall small size of individuals, mutation or DNA damage, immunosuppression, tissue deformities and abnormalities, disease outbreaks, mass mortalities, among others . This article reviews some of the stress evidence or biomarker responses of the molluscs to trace metals and water quality parameters especially thermal stress.