Application of Environmental Metabolomics for Assessment of Aquatic Invertebrate Sensitivity to Naphthenic Acids
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Naphthenic acids (NAs) are a class of chemicals found in oil sands process waters (OSPW) from the extraction of bitumen from surface mined oil sand. In Alberta, Canada, OSPW is currently stored indefinitely in tailing ponds and there are environmental concerns about seepage or spillage. NAs are known to be toxic to aquatic organisms. However, NA toxicity data are limited to primarily acute effects in a few species. Due to difficulties in comparing NA toxicity results, an extracted solution referred to as naphthenic acid fraction components (NAFCs) can be used as it is representative of OSPW toxicity and is well characterized. The goal of this research is to inform NA standards by performing chronic toxicity tests to derive metabolomic responses and estimates of survival. I exposed the ramshorn snail (Planorbarius corneus), and nymphs of two dragonflies, the common whitetail (Plathemis lydia) and the eastern pondhawk (Erythemis spp.), to 0, 6, 12, and 25 mg/L NAFCs for 21-days (snails) or 14-days (dragonflies) in laboratory microcosm experiments. Survival was altered only in the common whitetail with NAFC exposure. Snails laid approximately double the number of egg masses at higher concentrations of NAFCs. The metabolome responded differently among taxa. NAFC exposure altered the metabolome of only the common whitetail. Metabolite analysis for the common whitetail found that most altered metabolites were amino acids. The identified metabolites were involved primarily in pathways related to energy metabolism and protection from oxidative stress. My findings indicate that sensitivity to NAFCs is taxon-specific and demonstrate that an organism’s metabolome can provide insight into toxic effects of NAFCs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".