| Summary: | Progress Code: completed Statement: The Dates provided in temporal coverage are approximate only, and represent the beginning and end of the 2005 - 2006 Antarctic season. The latitudes and longitudes provided in spatial coverage are approximate only. Metadata record for data from ASAC Project 2677 Data on the sensitivity of Antarctic marine organisms to contaminants is limited, and is essential to understanding the risks contaminants pose to the Antarctic environment. The use of traditional toxicity assessment approaches, to collect high quality sensitivity data for a range of species, is a time consuming and difficult process, especially in remote and hostile environments like Antarctica. In this project, we used a rapid toxicity test approach (described by Kefford et al. 2005) to determine the approximate sensitivity of a large and representative sample of Antarctic marine invertebrates to three common metals (cadmium, copper, zinc). Sensitivity estimates generated via this method are likely to be less precise than those derived from traditional toxicity test methods (due to lower replication and fewer exposure concentrations), but a much larger number of estimates for a wider and more representative range of taxa are able to be produced (under equivalent resourcing). This is advantageous for subsequent Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD) models, which will include more species and will be more robust, producing protective concentration values that represent a greater proportion of the biodiversity of the region. In this study, a total of 88 different taxa were tested during the 2005/06 Austral summer at Casey station; specimens were collected from a wide range of intertidal and shallow sub-tidal marine sites, providing good representation of the nearshore marine invertebrate community as a whole for this region. Tests were of 10 day duration, with a water change at 4 days. Sensitivity estimates were modelled (LCx; concentrations lethal to x% of the test populations) at 4 and 10 days of exposure, ...
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