Observational study reveals tissue-specific accumulation of 24 elements in freshwater fish, indicating organ physiology drives elemental profiles more than species or size.
Key Points
To characterize the multielement distribution of 24 metal(loid)s across diverse tissues in freshwater fish and evaluate the influence of biological and environmental factors.
Quantified concentrations of 24 metal(loid)s in muscle, liver, gills, and gonads of dominant freshwater fish using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS).
Evaluated the effects of tissue type, fish species, body size, and season using classical statistical tests, principal component analysis (PCA), and the Neural Gas (NG) machine learning algorithm.
Tissue type was the primary determinant of elemental profiles, with the highest concentrations occurring in the liver and gills, intermediate levels in gonads, and lowest, most uniform levels in muscle.
Species and size-related variations were minimal or tissue-dependent, while PCA and Neural Gas algorithms effectively resolved tissue-specific profiles and complex within-tissue heterogeneity.
Cite This Study
Kljaković‐Gašpić et al. (2026) studied this question.