The pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT) concept was used to investigate effects of tri-n-butyltin (TBT) on marine periphyton communities on the Swedish west coast. Earlier field and microcosm studies demonstrated the validity of the PICT approach for such investigations. In the present study, the TBT tolerance of periphyton communities sampled from the field was shown to decrease successively as TBT concentrations in the water decreased during the years that followed after the TBT ban in 1989. This decrease in community tolerance over the years indicates that the selection pressure from TBT on the periphyton organisms slowly vanished. This report contributes with an additional piece of evidence that PICT is able specifically to detect minor TBT effects on periphyton and discriminate this toxicity from the influence of other environmental factors in the ecosystem.
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