Publications by authors named "Prescillia Lemesle"
The Baltic Sea is among the most polluted seas worldwide with elevated concentrations of trace elements (TEs). TEs can induce negative effects on organisms and may be transferred to eggs causing endocrine-disrupting effects on embryos. The Baltic Sea population of common eider (Somateria mollissima) has declined over the last thirty years, but the potential contribution of TEs to this decline is understudied.
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- Neonicotinoids are a type of insecticide that can harm farmland birds, but there's not much known about their effects on waterbirds.
- In a study in Finland, scientists looked for seven types of neonicotinoids in the blood of female common goldeneyes but couldn’t find any.
- The results suggest that these bird habitats are currently safe from neonicotinoid exposure, but more research is needed to understand the impact on the food chain and other birds.
Mercury (Hg) is a naturally occurring highly toxic element which circulation in ecosystems has been intensified by human activities. Hg is widely distributed, and marine environments act as its main final sink. Seabirds are relevant bioindicators of marine pollution and chicks are particularly suitable for biomonitoring pollutants as they reflect contamination at short spatiotemporal scales.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeabirds are increasingly used as bioindicators for assessing the chemical contamination of marine ecosystems, including by mercury (Hg) worldwide. However, some geographical areas are still poorly documented, as metropolitan France that is home to 28 seabird species including the black-legged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla, in the part of the southern limit of the North Atlantic range of the species. Here, we investigated Hg contamination and trophic ecology of black-legged kittiwakes breeding in the harbour of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Northern France.
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- Shorebirds are highly threatened birds, particularly at risk from pollution along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, which includes harmful metals and persistent chemicals that can impact wildlife survival.
- The study analyzed blood samples from 142 Arctic-breeding migratory shorebirds to assess pollution levels and their potential links to population trends, finding elevated concentrations of certain pollutants in birds staging in Taiwan compared to those in Western Australia.
- Despite identifying some elevated pollutant levels, the research concluded that there were no significant variations in pollution among different bird species, nor a clear correlation between pollution levels and declining shorebird populations, suggesting other factors might be influencing these declines.
Assessment of contaminants, health and survival of migratory shorebirds in natural versus artificial wetlands - The potential of wastewater treatment plants as alternative habitats.
Sci Total Environ
December 2023
The rapid destruction of natural wetland habitats over past decades has been partially offset by an increase in artificial wetlands. However, these also include wastewater treatment plants, which may pose a pollution risk to the wildlife using them. We studied two long-distance Arctic-breeding migratory shorebird species, curlew sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea, n = 69) and red-necked stint (Calidris ruficollis, n = 103), while on their Australian non-breeding grounds using an artificial wetland at a wastewater treatment plant (WTP) and a natural coastal wetland.
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