Fluctuating asymmetry in Menidia beryllina before and after the 2010 DeepWater Horizon oil spill

Assessing the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill with a dependable baseline comparison can provide reliable insight into environmental stressors on organisms that were potentially affected by the spill. Fluctuating asymmetry (small, non-random deviations from perfect bilateral symmetry) is an informative metric sensitive to contaminants that can be used to assess environmental stress levels. For this study, the well-studied and common Gulf of Mexico estuarine fish, Menidia beryllina, was used with pre and post-oil spill collections. Comparisons of fluctuating asymmetry in three traits (eye diameter, pectoral fin length, and pelvic fin length) were made pre and post-oil spill across two sites (Old Fort Bayou and the Pascagoula River), as well as between years of collection (2011, 2012)-one and two years, respectfully, after the spill in 2010. We hypothesized that fluctuating asymmetry would be higher in post-Deepwater Horizon samples, and that this will be replicated in both stud...通过可靠的基线对照评估深水地平线（Deepwater Horizon）原油泄漏事件的影响，可为受该泄漏事件潜在影响的生物所面临的环境胁迫提供可靠的解析视角。波动不对称（Fluctuating asymmetry，即完美双侧对称状态下的微小非随机偏离）是一种对污染物敏感的有效量化指标，可用于评估环境胁迫程度。本研究选取了研究较为充分的常见墨西哥湾河口鱼类——银汉鱼（Menidia beryllina），并采集了原油泄漏前后的实验样本。研究对3个形态性状（眼径、胸鳍长、腹鳍长）的波动不对称性开展了对比分析：分别在原油泄漏前后、两个采样位点（Old Fort Bayou与帕斯卡古拉河（Pascagoula River））之间，以及不同采样年份（2011年、2012年，分别对应2010年泄漏事件发生后的第1年与第2年）之间进行比较。本研究提出假说：深水地平线原油泄漏事件后的样本中，波动不对称性水平将更高，且该结果将在两项研究中得到复现……