ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the methodologies for evaluating effects on larvae and adults measuring less than 1.0 cm in length, truly the microscale toxicity procedures with polychaetes. Polychaetes are an important component of the marine environment especially in the benthos where they comprise 35 to 50% of both the total macroscopic species and specimen population. The chapter indicates the importance of conducting toxicological tests with larvae or small adult species of polychaetes. Dinophilus gyrociliatus and various species of Ophryotrocha offer many advantages as toxicological test organisms. The practice of relying on field-collected species to produce larvae in the laboratory is tenuous and unreliable at best. Crude oil and most refined petroleum products are a complex mixture of countless, largely organic, compounds. Research on the effects of detergents on marine organisms was stimulated by the use of the chemicals following the oil spill of the Torrey Canyon in 1967.
