Toxicity of Ammonia to Benthic Amphipod Grandidierella bonnieroides: Potential as Confounding Factor in Sediment Bioasssy
Abstract: Toxicity of ammonia
was evaluated using amphipod Grandidierella bonnieroides to describe its role
as confounding factor in sediment quality assessment. Ammonia is a toxic
compound that is found naturally in seawater and sediment. High ammonia content
in the pore water sediment can be potentially toxic to benthic biota, so that
it will interfere with the results of sediment toxicity tests. Laboratory
production amphipod was used in this ammonia toxicity test. Water-only toxicity
tests was conducted to produce new toxicity data of ammonia, and is expressed
as LC50, LOEC and NOEC for benthic amphipod G.bonnieroides. The study resulted
the 96-h median lethal concentration (LC50) of ammonia for G. bonnioerides was
65.5 mg.L-1. While the value LOEC (low observed effect concentration) is 56
mg.L-1 and NOEC value (no observed effect concentration) was 32 mg.L-1 . This
shows that ammonia has a relatively low toxicity to amphipod and ammonia does
not act as a confounding factor in the sediment toxicity test, because the
ammonia content in sediment does not pose any significant effect on amphipod
survival. It can be concluded that the amphipod has a potential useful as test
organism in sediment bioassay for assessing the quality of marine sediment.
Moreover, the high dependence of total ammonia toxicity indicates that it is
necessary to measure the total ammonia and pH of the medium when testing environmental
samples.
Aurthor: Dwi Hindarti, Zainal
Arifin1, Tri Prartono, Etty Riani, and Harpasis S. Sanusi
Journal Code: jpperikanangg150006
