Research Article Open Access

Ecotox - Monitoring of Pollution and Toxic Substances in Aquatic Ecosystems

Abstract

Worldwide rapidly increasing pollution from industrial, municipal and agricultural origin is a major threat to natural aquatic habitats, water reservoirs for recreational purposes and drinking water supplies. The multitude of organic and inorganic toxins cannot possibly be monitored by exhaustive chemical analysis. As a consequence a number of bioassays have been developed over the recent past to monitor aqueous ecosystems analyzing the biochemical and behavioral responses of organisms as early warning instruments to detect potential toxicants in the water. Photosynthetic motile flagellates (Euglena gracilis) have being used in the new generation Ecotox instrument by which 13 physiological and anatomical parameters are being evaluated as end points including motility, swimming velocity, gravitactic orientation as well as cell form and size. The instrument operates on line evaluating movement vectors of large numbers of organisms in video sequences in real time to warrant high statistical significance.

Donat-P Häder and Gilmar S Erzinger

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