Abstract
Marine pollution monitoring is important for food bio-safety as well as the conservation of the environment. The green mussel, Perna viridis has previously been used as an eco-sentinel organism in marine pollution monitoring. In this study the byssogenesis of P. viridis was used as a biomarker during an in vivo study. Fifteen P. viridis were exposed for 14 days in filtered seawater to metal mixtures of lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) containing 0.008, 0.04, 0.2, 1, 5 mg/l of each metal for 14 days. The results showed that Pb and Cd residues in the mussel tissue were proportional to the metal concentration in water. Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn’s Multiple Comparison tests were used to assess the effects of metal exposure on the production of byssus. The test results showed that the byssus production in 0.2 and 1 mg/l treatments was significantly different from controls (p < 0.05). Backward elimination regression was used to discern the role of Pb and Cd in the byssus productions. The regression demonstrated that Pb played a more important role than Cd in terms of byssogenesis. The study suggested that the byssogenesis production of P. viridis has potential to be used in biomarker studies.
Keywords: Byssogenesis, green mussel, biomarker, metals.
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