Abstract

Live animal gamma radioisotope tracing enables the monitoring of real-time contaminant uptake and retention in individual animals. It has been employed by ecotoxicologists to understand how animals respond to a variety of aquatic stressors. The use of the technique increases the complexity of the experimental design, resulting in the production of highly detailed and robust longitudinal data of individual animals. The greater complexity of the statistical models that underpin this data create risks from data being treated incorrectly. A systematic review of the literature was undertaken to comprehensively evaluate the experimental design and statistical approaches employed by current aquatic live animal radiotracing studies. The experimental design of current studies was categorized into one of five design “families”. Each experimental design could be described by at least one statistical model, which in turn informs a specific statistical approach. Collectively, 7% of studies provided insufficient information to determine the experimental design used, and 24% of studies undertook no formal statistical analysis of results. When the statistical approaches used in current studies were examined, in most cases the correct approach was undertaken, with only 18% of studies using a statistical approach that did not match the chosen experimental design. This review provides clear guidance on the analysis and interpretation of data collected from each experimental design and explains the advantages and disadvantages of each. Additionally, this paper identifies four key suggestions for future researchers, and provides commentary on the ethical, logistical and cost considerations associated with undertaking experiments that use live animal radiotracing.

摘要

活体动物 γ 放射性同位素示踪能够实时监测个体动物的污染物吸收和滞留情况。它已被生态毒理学家用来了解动物如何应对各种水生压力源。该技术的使用增加了实验设计的复杂性，从而产生了个体动物的高度详细和稳健的纵向数据。支持这些数据的统计模型的复杂性更高，会产生数据处理不当的风险。对文献进行了系统回顾，以全面评估当前水生活体动物放射性示踪研究所采用的实验设计和统计方法。当前研究的实验设计被归类为五个设计“家族”之一。每个实验设计都可以用至少一个统计模型来描述，这反过来又为特定的统计方法提供了信息。总的来说，7% 的研究提供的信息不足以确定所使用的实验设计，24% 的研究没有对结果进行正式的统计分析。当检查当前研究中使用的统计方法时，在大多数情况下采用了正确的方法，只有 18% 的研究使用了与所选实验设计不匹配的统计方法。这篇综述为从每个实验设计中收集的数据的分析和解释提供了明确的指导，并解释了每个实验设计的优缺点。此外，本文为未来的研究人员确定了四个关键建议，并就伦理、