Variation in chronic radiation exposure does not drive life history divergence among Daphnia populations across the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

ABSTRACT: Ionizing radiation is a mutagen with known negative impacts on individual fitness. However, much less is known about how these individual fitness effects translate into population-level variation in natural environments that have experienced varying levels of radiation exposure. In this study, we sampled genotypes of the freshwater crustacean, Daphnia pulex, from the eight inhabited lakes across the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). Each lake has experienced very different levels of chronic radiation exposure since a nuclear power reactor exploded there over thirty years ago. The sampled Daphnia genotypes represent genetic snapshots of current populations and allowed us to examine fitness-related traits under controlled laboratory conditions at UK background dose rates. We found that whilst

SUBMITTER: Goodman J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6405491 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature