Badger Liver Elemental Concentrations

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Publication date
2022-09-13
Creators
Sartorius, Andrea
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Description
This dataset contains the concentrations of 30 elements found in the livers of 448 badgers collected in the English Midlands in 2016 - 2017. All concentrations are in mg / kg dry weight.
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Subjects
  • Badgers
  • Trace elements in the body
  • Badgers -- Heavy metal content
  • European Badgers, elemental concentrations, trace metals, heavy metals, biomonitoring
  • Veterinary Sciences, Agriculture & related subjects::Animal science::Animal health::Animal physiology
  • Veterinary Sciences, Agriculture & related subjects::Animal science::Animal health::Animal pathology
  • Q Science::QL Zoology
Divisions
  • University of Nottingham, UK Campus::Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences::School of Veterinary Medicine & Science
Deposit date
2022-09-13
Data type
Raw concentrations
Contributors
  • Bennett, Malcolm
  • Corbetta, Davide
  • Grau Roma, Llorenç
  • Sandoval Barron, Elsa
  • Swift, Ben
Funders
  • Natural Environment Research Council
  • Natural Resources Wales
  • Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Grant number
  • NE/L002604/1
  • SE3054 / OJEU 28406
Collection dates
  • 2016 - 2017
Coverage
  • Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Northamptonshire
  • All badgers were collected within -3.508178, 51.522730: 0.427985, 53.700807/
Data collection method
Found badger carcasses were collected in England across Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Northamptonshire in 2016 – 2017, as part of a study on bovine tuberculosis in badgers (Figure 1; Swift et al., 2021). These badger carcasses were primarily collected on roadsides by citizen scientists. Liver samples, chosen because of their key role in element regulation and bioaccumulation (Kalisińska, 2019), were extracted from 448 of these badgers and freeze dried before being acid digested. Between 0.1 – 0.2 g of liver, along with 4 mL 70% HNO3 and 1 mL H2O2, were incubated on a hotplate block digester at 95 ˚C. After two hours, the samples were allowed to cool before being dispensed into plastic volumetric flasks, made up to 50 mL with MilliQ water (18.2 MΩ cm; Millipore Corporation, Darmstadt, Germany), and gently mixed. The samples were then left for at least ten minutes to allow for heavier material to settle to the bottom of the tube, and 10 mL of the supernatant solutions were decanted and stored at ambient temperature. The solutions were diluted 1-in-10 with MilliQ water prior to elemental analysis by ICP-MS. A certified reference material for trace elements in biological samples (BRC-185R Bovine Liver [trace elements]) was run for quality assurance purposes (recovery values for specific elements were: As [74.9%], Cd [103.9%], Cu [94.9%], Mn [99.1%], Pb [94.2%], Se [90.1%], and Zn [101.2%]). For each element, the operational limit of detection (LOD) was calculated as three times the standard deviation of the concentrations measured in 10 blank digestion samples run alongside the badger livers (Table 1). A value of 0.5*LOD was used in instances where the elemental concentration was lower than the LOD (Kushner, 1976). All concentrations were calculated as mg kg-1 dry weight; comparisons with published fresh weight concentrations were done assuming a liver water content of 72.1%, as described for European badgers by Kalisińska et al. (2009).
Resource languages
  • en
Publisher
The University of Nottingham
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Creative Commons by Attribution