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R/CBT-36
Bioaccumulation dynamics of hydrophobic organic contaminants in the Anacostia River food web
Principal Investigator:
David VelinskyStart/End Year:
1998 - 2000Institution:
Academy of Natural Sciences Estuarine Research CenterCo-Principal Investigator:
Gregory D. Foster, George Mason University; Donald P. Kelso, George Mason UniversityTopic(s):
- Fisheries
Description:
The overall objective of this project is to quantify the bioaccumulation and food web dynamics of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs: primarily PCBs, chlordanes and DDTs) in Anacostia River via exposure through the water column (e.g. suspension feeders, predators) and the benthic (e.g. deposit feeders, suspension feeders) communities in the sediments of the river. Specific objectives are to determine the contaminant level and season variations in important food sources to benthic and pelagic fish in the river, and determine the inter-relationships among primary producer-consumer-predator using multiple techniques including stable isotopes, gut content analysis, and PCB and chlordane concentration and fingerprinting analysis.
Funding Start Year
1998
Funding End Year
2000
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Featured Fellow
Nina Santos
Nina Santos is a Ph.D. student at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. For her dissertation, she is focused on small shrimp-like crustaceans called mysids – an understudied yet important part of many estuarine and coastal food webs.
Featured Research Project
Developing a habitat model for mysids, an important link in Chesapeake Bay food webs
Mysids are important mesozooplankton prey for many species of fish in Chesapeake Bay and are an important link in transferring energy from lower to upper trophic levels. Mysids also serve as biological vectors for benthic-pelagic coupling due to their diel vertical migration and omnivorous prey-switching behavior, which makes mysids important regulators of food web architecture. Despite their central role in coastal food webs, surprisingly little is known about mysid ecology and dynamics in Chesapeake Bay.
