Antarctica fishes

Raymond, J.A., and A.L. DeVries (1998). Elevated concentrations and synthetic pathways of tri-methylamine oxide and urea in some teleost fishes of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Fish. Physiol. Biochem. 18 387-398. 

One example for a chemically defended zooplankton species is the Antarctic pteropod Clione antarctica. This shell-less pelagic mollusk offers a potentially rich source of nutrients to planktivorous predators. Nonetheless fish do not prey on this organism, due to its efficient chemical defense. In a bioassay-guided structure elucidation, pteroenone 37 could be isolated and characterized as the main defensive principle of C. antarctica [82,83]. If embedded in alginate, this compound is a feeding-deterrent in nanomolar concentrations. This unusual metabolite is likely to be produced by C. antarctica itself and not accumulated from its food, since its major food sources did not contain any detectable quantities of 37. 

McDonald, S.J., M.C. Kennicutt II, H. Liu, and S.H. Safe. 1995. Assessing aromatic hydrocarbon exposure in Antarctic fish captured near Palmer and McMurdo stations, Antarctica. Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 29 232-240. 

Antarctica Terra Nova Bay 1989-91 Sediments Phytoplankton Invertebrates Fish, 4 species Muscle Liver Kidney Gills Gonads Birds... 

What are things made from We have become a society obsessed with questions about composition, and for good reason. Lead in petrol shows up in the snow fields of Antarctica mercury poisons fish in South America. Radon from the earth poses health hazards in regions built on granite, and natural arsenic contaminates wells in Bangladesh. Calcium supplements combat bone-wasting... 

Porania antarctica Echinoderms — Sea Stars Egg Lecithotrophic Fish 52... 

The relationship described above might lead one to suspect that the reason that the hyperiid amphipod Plyperiella dilatata abducts and carries a chemically defended sea butterfly (Clione antarctica) is that it lacks the ability to synthesize or produce its own chemical defenses. Indeed, Hay et al.39 have also shown that amphipods may associate with chemically defended algae to provide defense against fish predators, rather than produce defensive compounds themselves. 

The pteropod Clione antarctica, a pelagic mollusc, produces the polyketide pteroenone (Structure 7.69).53 Pteroenone is distasteful to sympatric fish.54 C. antarctica are subject to capture by the amphipod Hyperiella dilatata, which holds them in place on its dorsum and is similarly avoided by the same fish predators (see Section III.A, below). 

Somero, G.N., P.A. Fields, G.E. Hofmann, R.B. Weinstein, and H. Kawall (1998). Cold adaptation and stenothermy in Antarctic notothenioid fishes What has been gained and what has been lost In Fishes of Antarctica. A Biological Overview, pp. 97-109, ed. G. di Prisco, E. Pisano, and A. Clarke. Milan Springer. 

TCPM is reported in samples from areas from all over the world. A reason for this ubiquitous occurrence may be the presence of the 4-chlorophenyl rings in the compound, which are also found in p,p -DDT and its metabolites p,p -DDD and p,p -DDE, which are also very persistent contaminants. This structure is also found in bis(4-chlorophenyl) sulfone, which was recently reported as a new persistent contaminant [14]. The 4-chlorophenyl structure is apparently very resistant to transformation in the environment. Only in Mediterranean fish samples were TCPM and TCPMe not detected at a level of 1 pg/kg lipid weight. TCPM concentrations on a lipid weight basis decrease from 180 pg/kg to 360 pg/kg in eel from the river Rhine delta, to 40 pg/kg in cod liver from the southern North Sea, and to 6 pg/kg in cod liver from the northern North Sea (Table 2). This suggests a relationship between high TCPM concentrations and densely populated, industrialized areas. High TCPM concentrations in samples from the Baltic Sea and Lake Ontario and low TCPM concentrations in samples from Antarctica confirm this hypothesis. 

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