Studio sul bioaccumulo di metalli pesanti nella specie invasiva Cipangopaludina chinensis (Reeve, 1863) nel lago Saint Augustin (Québec, Canada)

Lake Saint-Augustin, located near Québec City (Quebec, Canada), was subjected for years to high anthropic pressures due to agricultural and urban activities (Galvez- Cloutier et al., 2003). The lake is eutrophic and its sediments are contaminated by metals. Cipangopaludina chinensis (Reeve, 1863) or Chinese mystery snail is a freshwater gastropod native to southeast Asia, Japan, China, Korea and eastern Russia. This species imported have invaded freshwater bodies across North America, forming isolated but dense populations in about 27 states of the Unites States and in Canada, originally in Ontario (Benson, 2008), but also recently reported in Québec The aims of this study were to estimate concentrations of heavy metals in C. chinensis, describing the possible relations of these values with the sediment concentrations in the Saint Augustin Lake (Québec, Canada), and to evaluate the possibility to use gastropods as a bioindicator of heavy metal accumulations reflecting the level of heavy metals in the sediments.