Towards non-invasive methods in measuring fish welfare : The measurement of cortisol concentrations in fish skin mucus as a biomarker of habitat quality
Carbajal, Annaïs (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Sanitat i d'Anatomia Animals)
Soler, Patricia (Universitat de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals)
Talló Parra, Oriol (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Ciència Animal i dels Aliments)
Isasa, Marina (Centro Tecnológico del Agua)
Echevarria, Carlos (Centro Tecnológico del Agua)
López Béjar, Manel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Sanitat i d'Anatomia Animals)
Vinyoles, Dolors (Universitat de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals)

Fecha:	2019
Resumen:	Cortisol levels in fish skin mucus have shown to be good stress indicators in farm fish exposed to different stressors. Its applicability in free-ranging animals subject to long-term environmental stressors though remains to be explored. The present study was therefore designed to examine whether skin mucus cortisol levels from a wild freshwater fish (Catalan chub, Squalius laietanus) are affected by the habitat quality. Several well-established hematological parameters and cortisol concentrations were measured in blood and compared to variations in skin mucus cortisol values across three habitats with different pollution gradient. Fluctuations of cortisol in skin mucus varied across the streams of differing habitat quality, following a similar pattern of response to that detected by the assessment of cortisol levels in blood and the hematological parameters. Furthermore, there was a close relationship between cortisol concentrations in skin mucus and several of the erythrocytic alterations and the relative proportion of neutrophils to lymphocytes. Taken together, results of this study provide the first evidence that skin mucus cortisol levels could be influenced by habitat quality. Although results should be interpreted with caution, because a small sample size was collected in one studied habitat, the measurement of cortisol in skin mucus could be potentially used as a biomarker in freshwater fish.
Nota:	Funding: This research was financially supported by Aigües de Barcelona and sponsored by Diputació de Barcelona (DiBa) in the context of the Biobesòs Project (Evaluation of the wetlands' efficacy to remove pollutants and improve the biodiversity levels in the Besòs river and its surroundings).
Derechos:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Lengua:	Anglès
Documento:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Materia:	Non-invasive ; Bioindicator ; Pollution ; Stress ; Welfare ; Constructed wetland ; Glucocorticoid ; Urban river
Publicado en:	Animals, Vol. 9 Núm. 11 (november 2019) , p. 939, ISSN 2076-2615

DOI: 10.3390/ani9110939
PMID: 31717428

14 p, 848.0 KB

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