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INGESTION AND ADSORPTION OF 'BACILLUS THURINGIENSIS' SUBSP. 'ISRAELENSIS' BY 'GAMMARUS LACUSTRIS' IN THE LABORATORY
Citation:
Brazner, J. AND R. Anderson. INGESTION AND ADSORPTION OF 'BACILLUS THURINGIENSIS' SUBSP. 'ISRAELENSIS' BY 'GAMMARUS LACUSTRIS' IN THE LABORATORY. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/J-86/303 (NTIS PB87175634), 1986.
Description:
Several groups of Gammarus lacustris adults were exposed to solutions containing 0.5 and 5.0 mg of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis per liter for 1- or 24-hour periods by using traditional static bioassay exposure procedures. The experiments verified that traditional exposure procedures assure ingestion of B. thuringiensis subsp. israelensis spores and provided a mean dose estimate of 1,948 spores ingested per test animal with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 891 to 4,296 (1-hour exposure, 5.0 mg liter). It was also found that dose level is highly dependent upon both exposure duration and concentration and that relatively short exposures can result in a relatively long-term retention of spores postexposure (>30 days). Body burden experiments established that large numbers of spores adsorb to the bodies of test animals during exposure and may in part explain the long-term retention of spores in the test system postexposure. These results imply that in field applications of microbial control agents, toxicologically unaffected but exposed organisms might transport the agent to untreated sites, expanding the effective treatment area and the number of organisms exposed.