LSU studying oil spill effect on bugs, food chain

LSU Agricultural Center scientists are comparing bugs and spiders from areas hit by oil last summer to those in oil-free areas to learn more about the BP oil spill’s effects, The Associated Press reports. “Insects are good indicators—signals—of stress,” says entomologist Linda Hooper-Bui. “They can be food for frogs, fish and birds. We’re asking the insects to tell us about the oil’s impact on the food web.” The study is one of three for which the AgCenter got $2 million through the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. The consortium received $12.2 million from the 10-year, $500 million academic research fund set up by BP, which created the fund but does not administer it. Hooper-Bui is lead researcher for the AgCenter group. “We’re looking at the ecosystem-level effects of stressors in salt marshes that fringe the Gulf of Mexico and on beaches and dunes from Texas to the Florida Panhandle,” she says. The researchers have established a line of experimental plots, called transects, in marshes, beaches and dunes—some of which have been covered in oil and others of which were spared.