Aquatic Pollution, radioecology, & Evolutionary Toxicology
Constructed Wetlands
We have done considerable work addressing the potential impacts of constructed wetlands on amphibian populations. Treatment wetlands are often built to allow natural processes involving vegetation, soils, and microbial communities to “treat” water before it enters the watershed. Consequently, these wetlands can be contaminated with metals such as copper, zinc, and mercury. To wildlife, these wetlands may appear as prime habitat, but individuals may experience negative effects from the contaminants. It’s even possible that these wetlands could have negative impacts on amphibian populations from surrounding natural wetlands if they leave the natural wetland for the constructed one. Our lab has been focusing on the effects of copper on amphibians. Frogs and salamanders are both quite susceptible to copper and it can cause both lethal and sublethal effects. We use a combination of small-scale lab microcosms, larger mesocosms, and in situ rearing to address these effects. Currently, we are investigating how spatial and temporal variation in aquatic contamination affects: patterns of gene flow, selection, and genome-wide changes in genetic diversity.
Evolutionary Toxicology
One of many benefits of working on the SRS is that we have some wetland areas with known histories of metal contamination. Some of these are treatment wetlands as described above and others are coal fly ash basins. It’s important to recognize that these types of wetlands and basins are globally very common, however, on the SRS we get to study them and help determine if modifications need to be made and/or if remediation is warranted. Because these have been around for a while we also can examine whether the local amphibian populations show signs of adapting to the contaminants. We have evidence that this does occur in southern toads. To date we have completed a quantitative genetics study, numerous tolerance studies and also have indications of what has been altered in the phenotype to improve tolerance to coal combustion wastes. Currently, we are eager to collaborate with others to investigate the genetic architecture of these traits.
Our paper (Flynn et al. 2021) made the cover of Evolutionary Applications!
Radioecology
Our lab was involved in a large collaborative study on the effects of chronic exposure to radiocesium on wildlife in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Dr. Cara Love (link to: https://www.caranlove.com/about) conducted her Ph.D. research on wolves and raccoon dogs. Her results suggest adaptation is occurring in the wolves and we are now pursuing a genomics approach to this question with Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton (link to: https://www.campbellstaton.com/wolves)
