Essential and Nonessential Elements in Nestling Rooks Corvus frugilegus from Eastern Poland with a Special Emphasis on T
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Essential and Nonessential Elements in Nestling Rooks Corvus frugilegus from Eastern Poland with a Special Emphasis on Their High Cadmium Contamination Grzegorz Orłowski • Piotr Kamin´ski • Zbigniew Kasprzykowski Zbigniew Zawada • Beata Koim-Puchowska • Małgorzata Szady-Grad • Jacek J. Klawe
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Received: 10 November 2011 / Accepted: 5 July 2012 / Published online: 4 September 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract Concentration of minerals (sodium, potassium, calcium [Ca], magnesium, iron [Fe], copper, zinc [Zn], manganese [Mn], and cobalt) as well as toxic metals (cadmium [Cd], lead [Pb]) were determined in five tissues (liver, lung, kidney, muscle, and bone) of nestling rooks (Corvus frugilegus; 1 to 13 days old) found dead in seven breeding colonies in eastern Poland. Cd concentration in all analyzed tissues was in the narrow range of 17.0–17.2 mg/ kg dry weight (dw) Cd, which in the light of the literature data indicates acute contamination by this toxic metal. Similarly, we found increased levels of Pb, which in all tissues ranged between 5.0 and 6.2 mg/kg dw. Results of multivariate general linear model (GLM) testing of the effect of three variables (tissue type, colony, and nestling age) on tissue concentrations of various metals showed significance for Fe, Cu, Zn, and Mn. Only concentrations of Ca, Fe, and Zn differed significantly between the analyzed tissues. GLM analysis did not show any statistically
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00244-012-9794-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. G. Orłowski (&) Institute of Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, 60-809 Poznan, Poland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] P. Kamin´ski B. Koim-Puchowska Department of Ecology and Environmental Protection, Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz, Nicolaus Copernicus University, 85-094 Bydgoszcz, Poland P. Kamin´ski Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Institute of Biotechnology and Environment Protection, University of Zielona Go´ra, 65-516 Zielona Gora, Poland
significant differences in tissue levels of minerals and both toxic metals among examined rookeries, which indicates the widespread presence of nonpoint Cd and Pb pollution linked to agricultural activity and similar levels of these inorganic contaminants on crop fields (feeding grounds) around breeding colonies. We concluded that high levels of both toxic metals, Cd and Pb, probably resulting from the diet of nestling rooks, are based mainly on a diet of grounddwelling beetles gathered on crop fields.
Soil invertebrate-feeding birds are particularly vulnerable to high doses of heavy metals through their diet (Pinowski et al. 1983; Carpene et al. 2006; Roodbergen et al. 2008; Hiller and Barclay 2011). The rook Corvus frugilegus is a colonial corvid broadly distributed in Europe and northern and central Asia, where breeding is strongly dependent on human agricultural activity (Cramp 1998). During the b
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