Heavy metals in wintering great bustard's feces

Feces is undigested food residues and therefore heavy metal content in feces of animal can reflect the heavy metal content of this animals' habitats. in jan. 2013,the feces of wintering great bustard were collected from the intersection area of the yellow,wei and luo river in the shaanxi yellow river wetland,china. this study determinate the contents of nine heavy metals - mn,cd,cr,cu,ni,pb,zn,as,hg in bustard' s feces and describes the threats of these metals in particular with pb,mn and ni on this wintering bird. among these,the content of mn was the highest in great bustard feces (174.55 mg/kg),followed by zn (57.46 mg/kg),cr (19.53 mg/kg),cu (15.80 mg/kg),ni (5.70 mg/kg),pb (2.93 mg/kg) and as (1.62 mg/kg). the content of cd and hg were the lowest viz.,0.35 mg/kg,0.05 mg/kg,respectively. the present results obtained by atomic fluorescence morphology analyzer,dma-80 mercury analyzer and inductively-coupled plasma emission spectrometer indicated that these methods were simple and reliable,and could be used for biological trace elements in long-term follow-up surveys. copyright 2014 zoological society of pakistan.