Transgenerational endocrine disruption? Experimental copper exposure, but not heat stress, leads to elevated egg thyroid hormone levels

Abstract

Climate change and pollution are some of the greatest anthropogenic threats to wild animals. Transgenerational plasticity - when parental exposure to environmental stress leads to changes in offspring phenotype - has been recently highlighted as a potential mechanism to respond to various environmental and anthropogenic changes across taxa. Transgenerational effects may be mediated via multiple mechanisms, such as transfer of maternal hormones to eggs/fetus. However, sources of variation in hormone transfer are poorly understood in fish, and thus the first step is to characterize whether environmental challenges alter transfer of maternal hormones to eggs. To this end, we explored the genetic and environmental variation (in response to temperature and endocrine disrupting copper) in maternal thyroid hormone (TH), transfer to offspring in a common fish model species, the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) using multiple approaches: (i) We compared ovarian TH levels among six populations across a wide geographical range in the Baltic Sea, including two populations at high water temperature areas (discharge water areas of nuclear power plants) and we experimentally exposed fish to (ii) environmentally relevant heat stress and (iii) copper for 7 days. We found that populations did not differ in intraovarian TH levels, and short-term heat stress did not influence intraovarian TH levels. However, copper exposure increased both T4 and T3 levels in ovaries. The next step would be to evaluate if such alterations would lead to changes in offspring phenotype. Capsule: We show that experimental copper exposure, but not heat stress (experimental or among-population variation), leads to elevated ovarian thyroid hormone levels in sticklebacks.