Rotifers as Models in Toxicity Screening of Chemicals and Environmental Samples

Abstract

An important objective of aquatic ecotoxicology is to determine the effects of toxic compounds in organisms that play a central role in aquatic communities where rotifers have a large impact on several important ecological processes. The contribution of the rotifers to secondary production in many aquatic communities is substantial as they are often the larger fraction of zooplankton biomass at certain times of the year. In addition to the importance of their ecological roles in aquatic communities, the rotifers are attractive organisms for ecotoxicological studies by its short life cycles and rapid reproduction, their small size, and little volumes needed for culture and toxicity assays. The main end points used in ecotoxicological studies are mortality, reproduction, behavior, and biomarkers. Such parameters are included in international regulations from all over the world, where different species are used to evaluate the effect of environmental samples or chemical compounds. The high diversity of rotifers is an important issue because it can modify their relative susceptibility to toxicants. Thus, more studies are needed to know the relations and mechanisms involved in clonal variation, sensitivity, and development, which can be all assessed by state-of-the-art procedures.

Freshwater toxicity testing using rehydratedPhilodinasp. (Rotifera) as test animals

“…Interest in rotifers as tools for assessing toxicity in aquatic environments continues to increase. Several review papers have appeared in the last few years highlighting the activity in this research area . These summarize the broad range of approaches from molecular and physiological to behavioral and population endpoints being used to characterize toxicity.…”

“…We believe that making it easier for labs to make toxicity measurements will allow their applications to expand and to generate toxicity data on which so many theoretical models depend. Meanwhile, toxicity data for Philodina continues to accumulate, making possible comparisons to other taxa and a relative ranking of the toxicity of a variety of compounds …”

“…Meanwhile, toxicity data for Philodina continues to accumulate, making possible comparisons to other taxa and a relative ranking of the toxicity of a variety of compounds. 3 24 Rotifers were cultured in EPA medium, 25 Once a Philodina culture reached high density (50 rotifers/mL), bottles were vortexed for about a minute to release attached rotifers.…”

Aquatic community structure as sentinel of recent environmental changes unraveled from lake sedimentary records from the Atacama Desert, Chile

“…Zooplankton populations are frequently used to detect anthropogenic contamination, because of their sensitivity to different toxicants and their important ecosystem role. Rotifers are usually more tolerant to many toxicants than cladocerans [84]. This may suggest that environmental conditions have become unfavorable for zooplankton.…”

In vivo screening of diterpene alkaloids using bdelloid rotifer assays

“…Acceptance by the scientific community, reproducibility, sensitivity, economic are criteria which in vivo studies have to meet. Rotifers are widely used in toxicity assessment and they fulfill all aforementioned requirements [25]. Various Rotifera species have been used for method development, however, none of these were applied for the examination of diterpene alkaloids [25,27].…”