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<oai_dc:dc xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:oai_dc="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/ http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd">
  <dc:contributor>Marc A. Mills</dc:contributor>
  <dc:contributor>Ken M. Fritz</dc:contributor>
  <dc:contributor>James M. Lazorchak</dc:contributor>
  <dc:contributor>Dalon P. White</dc:contributor>
  <dc:contributor>Gale B. Beaubien</dc:contributor>
  <dc:contributor>David Walters</dc:contributor>
  <dc:creator>Ryan R. Otter</dc:creator>
  <dc:date>2024</dc:date>
  <dc:description>&lt;div id="ab0005" class="abstract author" lang="en"&gt;&lt;div id="as0005"&gt;&lt;p id="sp0020"&gt;&lt;span&gt;Tetragnathid spiders have been used as sentinels to study the biotransport of contaminants between aquatic and terrestrial environments because a significant proportion of their diet consists of adult aquatic insects. A key knowledge gap in assessing tetragnathid spiders as sentinels is understanding the consistency of the year-to-year relationship between contaminant concentrations in spiders and sediment, water, and&amp;nbsp;macroinvertebrates. We collected five years of data over a seven-year investigation at a PCB contaminated-sediment site to investigate if concentrations in spiders were consistently correlated with concentrations in sediment, water, and aquatic macroinvertebrates. Despite significant year-to-year variability in spider PCB concentrations, they were not correlated with sediment concentrations (&lt;/span&gt;&lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;=&amp;nbsp;0.186). However, spider PCB concentrations were significantly, positively correlated with PCB concentrations in water (&lt;i&gt;p&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;&amp;nbsp;0.0001, annual r&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&amp;nbsp;=&amp;nbsp;0.35–0.84) and macroinvertebrates (p&amp;nbsp;&amp;lt;&amp;nbsp;0.0001; annual r&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;span&gt;&amp;nbsp;=&amp;nbsp;0.59–0.71).&amp;nbsp;Analysis of covariance&amp;nbsp;(ANCOVA) showed that spider PCB concentrations varied consistently with water (β&amp;nbsp;=&amp;nbsp;0.63) and macroinvertebrate PCB concentrations (β&amp;nbsp;=&amp;nbsp;1.023) among years. Overall, this study filled a critical knowledge gap in the utilization of tetragnathid spiders as sentinels of aquatic pollution by showing that despite year-to-year changes in PCB concentrations across environmental compartments, consistent relationships existed between spiders and water and aquatic macroinvertebrates.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div id="ab0010" class="abstract graphical" lang="en"&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</dc:description>
  <dc:format>application/pdf</dc:format>
  <dc:identifier>10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.169230</dc:identifier>
  <dc:language>en</dc:language>
  <dc:publisher>Elsevier</dc:publisher>
  <dc:title>PCB concentrations in riparian spiders (Tetragnathidae) consistently reflect concentrations in water and aquatic macroinvertebrates, but not sediment: Analysis of a seven-year field study</dc:title>
  <dc:type>article</dc:type>
</oai_dc:dc>