Evaluating mercury biomagnification in fish from a tropical marine environment using stable isotopes (δ13C AND δ15N)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Concentrations of total mercury (T-Hg) and methylmercury (MeHg) were measured in zooplankton and 13 fish species from a coastal food web of the Gulf of Oman, an arm of the Arabian Sea between Oman and Iran. Stable isotope ratios (delta13C and delta15N) also were determined to track mercury biomagnification. The average concentration of T-Hg in zooplankton was 21 +/- 8.0 ng g(-1) with MeHg accounting 10% of T-Hg. Total mercury levels in fish species ranged from 3.0 ng g(-1) (Sardinella longiceps) to 760 ng g(-1) (Rhizoprionodon acutus) with relatively lower fraction of MeHg (72%) than that found in other studies. The average trophic difference (Deltadelta13C) between zooplankton and planktivorous fish (Selar crumenopthalmus, Rastrelliger kanagurta, and S. longiceps) was higher (3.4 per thousandth) than expected, suggesting that zooplankton may not be the main diet or direct carbon source for these fish species. However, further sampling would be required to compensate for temporal changes in zooplankton and the influence of their lipid content. Trophic position inferred by delta15N and and slopes of the regression equations (log10[T-Hg] = 0.13[delta15N] - 3.57 and log10[MeHg] = 0.14[delta15N] - 3.90) as estimates of biomagnification indicate that biomagnification of T-Hg and MeHg was lower in this tropical ocean compared to what has been observed in arctic and temperate ecosystems and tropical African lakes. The calculated daily intake of methylmercury in the diet of local people through fish consumption was well below the established World Health Organization (WHO) tolerable daily intake threshold for most of the fish species except Euthynnus affinis, Epinephelus epistictus, R. acutus, and Thunnus tonggol, illustrating safe consumption of the commonly consumed fish species.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".