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Unknown to most non-scientists, the nation’s oldest mollusk collection resides four floors above one of Philadelphia’s busiest tourist areas and is now getting pressed into action to determine the impact with the nation’s worst oil spill.
Scientists recently borrowed a sampling of oyster shells from the Academy of Natural Sciences’ malacology collection, the third largest in the globe with some 12 million specimens, for their study of the impact with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on marine life within the Gulf of Mexico. California Academy of Sciences Curator Dr. Peter Roopnarine, along with Laurie Anderson of Louisiana State University and David Goodwin of Denison University, want to find out how marine life in sensitive marshlands along the Gulf coast will probably be affected over time.
The study centers on how rapidly it takes the hydrocarbons and heavy metals in crude oil to affect marine food webs, something scientists know quite little about. As a way to track the alterations inside the specimens which will be studied, a lot of previous samples collected from similar locations and from different time periods are required. Roopnarine said only the Academy of Natural Sciences has suitable specimens from every decade of the 20th century.
“We often think of our collections as storehouses of past knowledge,” Roopnarine stated. “The collections, however, are tremendously important assets for scientific research on the present.”
By employing the Academy’s oyster shells as a baseline, Roopnarine and his colleagues will probably be able to determine the quantities of hydrocarbons and heavy metals that had been already present in the Gulf mollusks before oil drilling began after which track how much has accumulated consequently with the recent oil spill. The scientists also will have a look at tellinid clams and periwinkles. Each of the three species uses a different pathway to feed.
If their findings reveal that the shells are adopting hydrocarbons at the exact same speed, it means they’re all drawing these compounds from the water column. If, however, they are becoming incorporated at different rates, it would mean the animals are receiving contaminants from their food sources. Mollusks are getting studied simply because, as “primary consumers,” shellfish are likely to be the very first to show traces of hydrocarbons and heavy metals that could later be passed on to creatures that feed on shellfish. Given the carcinogenic nature of hydrocarbons, the concern lies with the physiological harm to marine life when the supplies have spread by way of the food chain.
“There is little use saying ‘the BP spill will pollute the Gulf’ unless you’ll be able to demonstrate how polluted the Gulf was to begin with and how lengthy it’s been given that it wasn’t polluted at all,” said Paul Callomon, the Academy of Natural Sciences’ malacology collection manager. “While much of the oil spill’s impact is unknown, Dr. Roopnarine’s study making use of the Academy’s collection will create a foundation to answer some of these questions.”
On a related note, Academy Malacology Curator Dr. Gary Rosenberg documented far more than 1,700 species of mollusks from the Gulf of Mexico for a book published last year on the fauna and flora of that region. Rosenberg said “about 10 percent with the species of mollusks in the Gulf are endemics, known from nowhere else on earth. Such species are the ones at greatest risk from the oil spill.”
Source:
Carolyn Belardo
The Academy of Natural Sciences