Intraspecific variation of mercury contamination in chicks of Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus) in coastal wetlands from Southwestern Europe

摘要

Birds have been considered useful biomonitors for mercury pollution (Furness 1993). Mercury contamination in birds can easily be assessed through feather sampling. Feather represents the major pathway for elimination of mercury, body feathers can be used for the assessment of whole bird mercury burdens (Furness et al 1986; Thompson et al. 1990) and mercury in feathers is almost entirely methylmeicury (Thompson and Furness 1989) Chicks have certain advantages for monitoring mercury pollution Chicks are confined to a limited area and mercury uptake during their growth period can be followed Moreover dynamics of mercury contamination have been well studied in chicks (Lewis and Furness 1991; Becker et al 1993a; Monteiro and Furness 2001), and chick feather has been considered a good monitoring unit (Becker et al 1993b) Growing feathers accumulate higher mercury concentrations than those in chick tissues or blood (Lewis and Furness 1991; Burger and Gochfeld 1992), but show a high correlation with mercury levels in tissues and in food (Stewart et al 1997; Monteiro and Fuiness 2001). For these reasons chick feathers have already been used to study geographic variation between colonies (Goutner and Furness 1998).