fairfolio
Saved Projects

Unintended Consequences of Mosquito Pesticides on the Marine Environment: Potential Effects on the Threatened Staghorn Coral, Acropora cervicornis

ISEF · 2014 Cellular and Molecular Biology

Precht, Chandler

Is this your project?

Overview

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two commonly used insecticides for mosquito control on the Threatened coral Acropora cervicornis. The chemicals used in this study included Dibrom and Permethrin. While it is thought that the diluted formulations of these insecticides do not pose unreasonable risks to humans, wildlife or the environment, few studies have examined the non-target effects of these applications on corals. Fragments of the coral A. cervicornis were collected in the fall of 2013. These corals were exposed in the lab to seawater containing concentrations of 0.05, 0.5, and 5.0 µg/l from each of the pesticides. These corals were placed in test solutions for 72 hours, after which their viability was determined by visual inspection. Each experimental treatment contained three corals. The results varied by both pesticide and its concentration in seawater. Dibrom in concentrations of 0.05, 0.5, and 5.0 µg/l had no noticeable effects for the duration of the experiment. However, Permethrin concentrations of 5.0 µg/l killed 100% of the corals in that treatment. In addition, Permethrin concentrations of 0.5 µg/l resulted in morbidity of the corals in that treatment. These results showed that A. cervicornis showed some resistance to low levels of Permethrin, however, at high concentrations they were either adversely affected or killed outright. The LD50 calculated for A. cervicornis after a 72 hour exposure to Permethrin is 2.75 µg/l. For the Diabrom treatments there was no significant difference between the control group and the three experimental treatments (P = 0.952). Therefore the null-hypothesis cannot be rejected for Diabrom. For the Permethrin there was a significant difference between the control and the treatments (P = 0.0394).

Working on something like this? See what's been done and what's still open.

Competition history

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Report a problem

Source: Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google