Feeding in the garbage: physiological and microbiological consequences of using landfills as food resource in the white stork (Ciconia ciconia)

This PhD thesis aimed to establish if the use of landfills as a food resource by white storks, which a priori, judged by the increasing population appears positive, could have any effects on the health status of nestlings. For this purpose, initially, we evaluated the status of individuals which were fed different proportions of food from landfills, using a multidisciplinary approach based on the evaluation of nutritional status, liver and renal function, oxidative stress balance and the presence of pathogens. This way we identified that, in fact, the higher the proportion of food from landfills the better the nutritional status, indicating higher food intake. Hepatic and/or renal function were not affected. Also, oxidative stress balance, which is more sensitive to damage by the potentially present pollutants in the landfill, is suggestive of a hormetic response; i. e. an increase in defences that allows to cope with limited damage without compromising the organism. Landfill foraging storks also have a higher prevalence of antibiotic resistant E.coli, which could be a problem not only for the health of the storks, also for the transmission of these microorganisms to other wildlife, livestock and humans. After obtaining a broad overview of the effect of this use, we tried to confirm previous results at a much larger scale, increasing the number of colonies of study, and more importantly, to verify if the benefits hold, regardless of the year of study. In the second chapter, we confirmed that the benefits on nutritional status of nestlings which were fed with food from landfills are constant between years, as well as the apparent lack of affectation on hepatic and/or renal systems. However, the response of the oxidative stress balance was not always the same, because of dietary antioxidants and the necessity of natural food during the first period of life. Even so, the use of landfill oraged food never produced a disbalance in the oxidative stress balance, which indicates that, despite the year, the potential damage could be perfectly counteracted by the organisms of the nestlings..

Medienart:	E-Book

Erscheinungsjahr:	2021
Erschienen:	Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: Universidad Complutense de Madrid ; 2021

Sprache:	Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:	Pineda Pampliega, Javier [VerfasserIn]
Hochschulschrift:	Dissertation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2021

Links:	eprints.ucm.es [kostenfrei]

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):	1803549807