Meeting Abstract
The Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear explosion disasters created large natural laboratories for the long-term study of low-dose radiation. Chronic exposure has been shown to negatively affect fitness and development in both vertebrate and invertebrate species from the Chernobyl region, in addition to humans. Radiation is also known to cause oxidative stress, an imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) and antioxidant defenses, which can lead to increased mutation rates. Mutational events can cause developmental instability, which can be reliably tracked by fluctuating asymmetry (FA) and other developmental malformations. Fluctuating asymmetry has been shown in insect species to be an indicator of oxidative stress. For this experiment, dragonflies were chosen as a study species, due to their short generational times and discrete developmental unit (wings). We captured dragonflies of several species from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in the Ukraine, as well as from Fukushima, Japan. Analysis of fluctuating asymmetry was conducted using sixteen landmark points on the top and bottom wings, which correspond to homologous vein intersections, as markers for measurement of fluctuating asymmetry and centroid size. Preliminary results of data analysis from dragonflies in Chernobyl indicate some significant results. Qualitative analysis also shows frequent abnormalities in venation patterns of Chernobyl and Fukushima species. This project has been the first step in assembling a multi-year database of landmark data from Chernobyl and Fukushima.
