Causes and consequences of metal-impaired chemosensory function in aquatic animals

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Aquatic animals live in a universal solvent. Water has a high capacity for dissolving a range of both organic and inorganic chemicals. As such, aquatic animals have evolved sophisticated chemical communication systems for receiving information about their surrounding environment by sensing various chemicals in the water. These info-chemicals convey information about the location of food or predators, genetic quality and reproductive status of potential mates, location of migratory routes, and more. Moreover, the molecular machinery used to detect and process these chemicals is conserved among taxa. Although we have understood for over 30 years that some water contaminants, like metals, can interfere with a fish's sense of smell, we do not yet fully appreciate the extent of this contaminant-induced sensory deficit nor do we appreciate its ecological significance. Our work involves studying metal-impaired chemosensation in animals representing different levels of a typical aquatic food web, including water fleas representing the zooplankton and primary consumers, and fishes representing predators and secondary consumers. The goal of our work is to understand how metals interfere with chemosensation and how those effects impair vital processes like predator-avoidance, feeding, and reproduction. By understanding metal effects on processes at the cellular or subcellular levels of biological organization, we can begin to understand how those effects propagate to higher levels of organization to become manifest at the population, community, or ecosystem levels. Protection of aquatic environments consistently ranks highly among Canadians owing to the several recreational and economic resources these systems offer. Because this work affords us an unique opportunity to determine the extent to which chemical communication participates in essential processes that are vital to ecosystem function, we can begin to determine the extent to which human activities affect fundamental ecosystem processes. Both the regulatory and industrial communities will be interested in this work in order to develop approaches that mitigate these effects and ultimately protect ecosystems.