Maria Helena Costa

Faculty of Sciences and Technology, New University of Lisbon, Portugal · Environmental Sciences and Engineering

A segment of the Guadalquivir River was assessed between the Alcalá del Río dam and Seville through an integrative sediment quality assessment. Chemical concentrations of metals and toxicity under laboratory conditions were used as lines of evidence. A battery of bioassays with four organisms (the amphipod Ampelisca brevicornis, the bacteria Vibrio...

The São Francisco River (one of the most important South American rivers) has many contamination sources, but just a few environmental assessments have been conducted. A weight-of-evidence approach identified the pollution sources (industrial activities, mineral processing, fisheries, and tourism) in the river and the city of Três Marias based on t...

European Mediterranean countries have been affected by unhealthy pollutants released by wildfire smoke. This work aims to determine the inorganic elements, present in the vegetable widely consumed by the rural population, provided by burned areas. Two groups composed the sampling plan; group one before forest fires and group two after forest fires...

The need to overcome logistic and ethical limitations of in vivo nanotoxicity evaluation in marine organisms is essential, mostly when dealing with fish. It is well established that medium/solvent conditions affect dispersion and agglomeration of nanoparticles (NPs), which represents a constraint towards a solid and realistic toxicity appraisal. In...

https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1Y6MgzLNSO5DQ

Eulalia viridis is a marine Polychaeta of the rocky intertidal that, despite its simple anatomy, is an active predator of much larger invertebrates, from which it extracts pieces of soft tissue through suction. This uncanny feeding strategy triggered the pursuit for the morphological mechanisms that enable adaptation to its environment. The evaluat...

Addressing the risk of mixed carcinogens in vivo under environmentally-realistic scenarios is still a challenge. Searching for adequate biomarkers of exposure requires understanding molecular pathways and their connection with neoplasia-related benchmark pathologies. Subjecting the zebrafish model to realistic concentrations of two genotoxicants an...

Morphology-based profiling of benthic communities has been extensively applied to aquatic ecosystems’ health assessment. However, it remains a low-throughput, and sometimes ambiguous, procedure. Despite DNA metabarcoding has been applied to marine benthos, a comprehensive approach providing species-level identifications for estuarine macrobenthos i...

The concerns about the presence of microplastics (MPs) in marine ecosystems have widely increased in the past years. This is reflected in a growing number of studies addressing the effects of exposure to these materials in indigenous, farmed and even laboratory marine animals subjected to toxicity-oriented bioassays. There have been, however, many...

Benthic communities are key components of aquatic ecosystems’ biomonitoring. However, morphology-based species identifications remain a low-throughput, and sometimes ambiguous, approach. Despite metabarcoding methodologies have been applied for above-species taxa inventories in marine meiofaunal communities, a comprehensive approach providing speci...

In this study we compared DNA barcode-suggested species boundaries with morphology-based species identifications in the amphipod fauna of the southern European Atlantic coast. DNA sequences of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I barcode region (COI-5P) were generated for 43 morphospecies (178 specimens) collected along the Portuguese coast which, to...

Environmental risk assessment of complex ecosystems such as estuaries is a challenge, where innovative and integrated approaches are needed. The present work aimed at developing an innovative integrative methodology to evaluate in an impacted estuary (the Sado, in Portugal, was taken as case study), the adverse effects onto both ecosystem and human...

In order to evaluate the effects of elevated temperature and pCO2 on the polychaete Nereis diversicolor from the Río San Pedro estuary in Spain, multifactorial stressor experiments were performed in various combinations: at two temperatures (ambient temperature and temperature estimated for the year 2100) and at three pHNBS levels (estimated level...

Even though PAHs are considered priority marine pollutants, information on the interaction effects between these compounds is scarce, furthermore under ecologically-relevant circumstances. Semi-quantitative and quantitative histological analyses were enforced on the gills of the seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax), exposed to two model PAHs, single or c...

The Gastropoda is one of the best studied classes of marine invertebrates. Yet, most species have been delimited based on morphology only. The application of DNA barcodes has shown to be greatly useful to help delimiting species. Therefore, sequences of the cytochrome c oxidase I gene from 108 specimens of 34 morpho-species were used to investigate...

Background: The Gastropoda are among the most diverse taxonomic groups of marine invertebrates and, together with other dominantclasses, such as Bivalvia, Malacostraca, and Polychaeta, constitute major components of marine benthic communities. As part of a wider effort to compile reference libraries for dominant benthic invertebrates of the NE Atla...

Background: Amphipods are one of the most diverse and widely distributed groups of crustaceans, often constituting dominant or key elements of marine and coastal communities. As with many other marine invertebrate taxa, rigorous species identifications can be rather challenging, and cryptic species reports have been increasing. In this study we com...

Background: The estuarine and coastal intertidal areas have a large number of benthic invertebrates, where the annelid polychaetes are one of the most representative classes and, therefore, important indicators of environmental quality in these ecosystems. Yet, these organisms have been poorly studied, in comparison to other taxa of similar ecologi...

Microanatomical alterations in the gut of an marine polychaete (Eulalia viridis, Errantia: Phyllodocidae) during the digestive process - Volume 21 Issue S6 - A.P. Rodrigo, M.H. Costa, P.M. Costa

Annelid polychaetes have been seldom the focus of dedicated DNA barcoding studies, despite their ecological relevance and often dominance, particularly in soft-bottom estuarine and coastal marine ecosystems. Here we report the first assessment of the performance of DNA barcodes in the discrimination of shallow water polychaete species from the sout...

Research on the toxicological mechanisms of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) deemed carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic has mostly been developed for individual compounds even though, in the environment, PAHs invariably occur in mixtures. The present work aimed at understanding the interaction effects of two model PAHs, the potentially carcinog...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are priority environmental mutagens and carcinogens that occur in the aquatic environment as mixtures rather than the individual compounds for which guidelines are issued. The present work aimed at understanding the interaction effects between carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic PAHs in a model marine fish (Dic...

As for many invertebrates, the gut of marine polychaete species has key physiological functions. However, studies integrating microanatomical descriptions with physiological processes are scarce. The present investigates histological, histochemical and cytological changes in the alimentary canal during the digestive cycle of the marine annelid Eula...

Acrylamide is an amide used in several industrial applications making it easily discharged to aquatic ecosystems. The toxicity of acrylamide to aquatic organisms is scarcely known, although previous studies with murine models provided evidence for deleterious effects. To assess the effects of acrylamide to freshwater fish, goldfish (Carassius aurat...

The application of the Comet assay in environmental monitoring remains challenging in face of the complexity of environmental stressors, e.g., when dealing with estuarine sediments, that hampers the drawing of cause-effect relationships. Although the in vitro Comet assay may circumvent confounding factors, its application in environmental risk asse...

Simvastatin (SIM), a hypocholesterolaemic drug, is among the most widely used pharmaceuticals worldwide and is therefore of emerging environmental concern. Despite the ubiquitous nature of SIM in the aquatic ecosystems, significant uncertainties exist about sublethal effects of the drug in aquatic organisms. Therefore, here we aimed at investigatin...

The present work developed an integrative methodology to evaluate the adverse effects of impacted estuarine sediments to human and ecosystem health, taking the Sado Estuary (Portugal) as a case study. The best professional judgment for a Weight of Evidence (WOE) approach was based on: i) human contamination pathways; ii) human health effects; iii)...

Estuaries and transitional waters are important ecosystems from which organisms and humans are dependent on for survival. They are important as nursery areas and shelter for many aquatic organisms, from which humans and their economical activities are dependent on. Humans also depend on estuaries for other reasons such as tourism, heavy industry, a...

Estuarine sediments may be reservoirs of hydrophilic and hydrophobic pollutants, many of which are acknowledged genotoxicants, pro-mutagens and even potential carcinogens for humans. Still, studies aiming at narrowing the gap between ecological and human health risk of sediment-bound contaminant mixtures are scarce. Taking an impacted estuary as a...

Complex toxicant mixtures present in estuarine sediments often render contaminant screening unfeasible and compromise determining causation. HepG2 cells were subjected to bioassays with sediment extracts obtained with a series of progressively polar solvents plus a crude extract. The sediments were collected from an impacted area of an estuary othe...

Pharmaceuticals, such as simvastatin, act on specific metabolic processes, becoming potentially toxic to aquatic organisms and to human populations. In this study, the amphipod, Gammarus locusta, was chronically exposed to a broad range of sublethal concentrations of simvastatin and was subjected to a histopathological evaluation using bright-field...

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are considered priority pollutants due to their high risk to environment and to their carcinogenic potential to humans. Considering their hydrophobic properties, these substances tend to be trapped and stored in aquatic sediments. In order to understand the toxicity between carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic P...

Anthropogenic activities in estuarine ecosystems are the main cause of contamination by endocrine disruption compounds (EDCs), most of which are believed to be organic contaminants. The present work intended to detect endocrine disruption in a flatfish, Solea senegalensis and its potential relationship to organic toxicants in a contaminated estuary...

For the purpose of biomonitoring, species that combine ecological and commercial importance may provide a link between ecological and human health risk. The common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, holds both characteristics in south-western Europe, albeit remaining unsurveyed in ecotoxicological studies. Cuttlefish collected from an impacted estuary...

Transitional waterbodies, such as estuaries, are highly diversified environments with respect to ecology, geophysics, and nature of anthropogenic impacts. This spatial heterogeneity may pose important constraints when developing monitoring programmes for aquatic pollution. The present study compared three distinct coastal ecosystems located in Sout...

Building reference libraries of DNA barcodes is relatively straightforward when specifically designed primers are available to amplify the COI-5P region from a relatively narrow taxonomic group (e.g. single class or single order). DNA barcoding marine communities have been comparatively harder to accomplish due to the broad taxonomic diversity and...

The increase in CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources may not only result in temperature increase on a global scale but also in increased ocean acidification (OA), by lowering the ocean's capacity to absorb additional atmospheric CO2. As a consequence, changes in ocean chemistry are prone to occur through the imbalancing of sea-atmosphere [1,2]...

Animal skin pigments, often of undisclosed biochemical nature, have many functions besides signalling and camouflage: they also play a protective role against environmental stressors, from radiation and oxidative stress–inducers to predators and parasites. Most pigments are not fully synthetized by animals but rather acquired from vegetable feed an...

Mais do que um projeto, o MARGov – Governância Colaborativa de Áreas Marinhas Protegidas (margov.isegi.unl.pt) – consistiu no desenvolvimento de um diálogo colaborativo envolvendo os atores chave do Parque Marinho Professor Luiz Saldanha, na Arrábida. Este projeto apostou num modelo de governância colaborativa, em que cada parceiro se tornou um age...

The analysis of multiple biomarker responses is nowadays recognized as a valuable tool to circumvent potential confounding factors affecting biomonitoring studies and allows a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying exposure to natural mixtures of toxicants. For the purpose of an environmental risk assessment (ERA) in an impacted estuary...

The cephalopod digestive gland is a complex organ that, although analogous to the vertebrate liver, has additional functions, with special (albeit not exclusive) note on its active role in digestion. Although the structure of the digestive cell and its main constituents are well known (among which “boules” and brown bodies are distinctive features)...

Recently there has been an effort to put in practice integrated management plans in Marine Protected Areas (MPA) not only because of their high natural and cultural importance but also due to usual conflicts related to local activities. These plans should include the use of adaptive sustainability indicators that reflect stakeholders concerns, and...

A parasite screening combining histological and molecular techniqueswas performed on healthy grooved carpet shell clams collected from a commercial shellfish bed in Southern Portugal. The study included the first attempt to develop molecular techniques to detect and identify Rickettsia/Chlamydia-like bacteria and gill ciliates infecting this high-v...

Although a routine procedure to detect mutagenesis by DNA strand breakage in animal cells, the single-cell gel electrophoresis (“comet”) assay is difficult to apply in plant material due to constraints in obtaining suitable nucleoids (formed by DNA trapped in the agarose matrix after the cell lysis process) in either quality or quantity. A suitable...

Bivalve histopathology is an acknowledged tool in environmental toxicology studies, however geographically restricted, limited to a few species and still lacking the degree of detail needed to develop effective (semi)quantitative approaches. A first-time detailed histopathological screening was performed on grooved carpet shell clams collected from...

A histopathological screening was performed on juvenile Senegalese soles exposed to environmentally realistic concentrations of waterborne Cd (0.5, 5 and 10 μg L(-1)) for 28 days. The severity and dissemination of histopathological changes were variable and limited to the kidney, liver, spleen, gills and skin goblet cells. Contradicting available l...

A novel and expedient histological tetrachrome technique was developed and applied to whole-body sections of the clam Ruditapes decussatus (L. 1758). The technique involves fixation in Carnoy's fluid followed by immediate embedding in paraffin with staining with a combination of Alcian Blue, Periodic Acid-Schiff's, Haematoxylin and Picric Acid. Fix...

The increasing availability of reference libraries of DNA barcodes (RLDB) offers the opportunity to the screen the level of consistency in DNA barcode data among libraries, in order to detect possible disagreements generated from taxonomic uncertainty or operational shortcomings. We propose a ranking system to attribute a confidence level to specie...

Accession numbers for DNA barcodes used in this study. Specimens' list of 659 COI-5P sequences from 102 species, 79 genera, 54 families of marine fishes from Portugal. The corresponding BOLD – Process IDs and Project names are provided. (XLS)

Neighbour Joining tree of fishes of Portugal. NJ Tree resulting from 659 sequences and obtained using Kimura-2-parameter distance model. Branches are collapsed at species level and supported by bootstrap values based on 1000 replicates. In total, 102 species, 79 genera, and 54 families are here reported. (TIF)

Succession of species used to generate the Klee diagram. (XLS)

Assessing toxicity of contaminated estuarine sediments poses a challenge to ecotoxicologists due to the complex geochemical nature of sediments and to the combination of multiple classes of toxicants. Juvenile Senegalese soles were exposed for 14 days in the laboratory and in situ (field) to sediments from three sites (a reference plus two contamin...

Surveying toxicity of complex geochemical media as aquatic sediments often yields results that are either difficult to interpret or even contradictory to acknowledged theory. Multi-level biomarkers were investigated in a benthic fish exposed to estuarine sediments through laboratory and in situ bioassays, to evaluate their employment either in ecol...

Juvenile Senegalese soles (Solea senegalensis) were exposed to estuarine sediments through 28-day laboratory and in situ (field) bioassays. The sediments, collected from three distinct sites (a reference plus two contaminated) of the Sado Estuary (W Portugal) were characterized for total organic matter, redox potential, fine fraction and for the le...

Juvenile Senegalese soles were exposed through 28-day laboratory and field (in situ) bioassays to sediments from three sites of the Sado estuary (W Portugal): a reference and two contaminated by metallic and organic contaminants. Fish were surveyed for ten hepatic histopathological alterations divided by four distinct reaction patterns and integrat...

A fraca governância e a escassa participação dos actores locais na gestão das Áreas Marinhas Protegidas (AMP) são uma barreira importante à sustentabilidade dos oceanos. As causas residem na ausência de um acordo social sobre conservação e uso dos recursos marinhos e na fraca articulação entre entidades com diferentes competências e legitimidade. O...

The transcription of contaminant response-related genes was investigated in juvenile Senegalese soles exposed to sediments from three distinct sites (a reference plus two contaminated) of a Portuguese estuary (the Sado, W Portugal) through simultaneous 28-day laboratory and in situ bioassays. Transcription of cytochrome P450 1A (CYP1A), metallothio...

The effect of captive broodstock diet on fertilization and endotrophic larvae development of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus was assessed. Maize grain and five inert pelleted diets were tested, during a three-month experimental period. Maize flour, wheat flour, soybean flour, maize/wheat flour (MWF) and maize/soybean flour mixes were used as v...

The effects of sediment-bound contaminants on kidney and gill chloride cells were surveyed in juvenile Solea senegalensis exposed to fresh sediments collected from three distinct sites of the Sado Estuary (Portugal) in a 28-day laboratorial assay. Sediments were analyzed for metallic contaminants, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and organochlorine...