ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how one group of microscopic animals, the rotifers, can be used for aquatic toxicity testing on a microscale. It also describes features of their biology that enable them to be confined and manipulated in microvolumes and how this can be done while making ecologically relevant measurements. Toxicity tests are one of the essential tools for evaluating the effects of anthropogenic stress in aquatic ecosystems. Rotifers play an important role in the ecological processes of many aquatic communities. Recent phylogenetic analyses suggest that the closest relatives of the Rotifera are the Acanthocephala and Nematoda. As aquatic toxicology matures as a science, more emphasis is being placed on understanding the mechanisms of toxicity. As microscopic animals, rotifers are excellent experimental systems for investigating the relationship between molecular and cellular events and survival and reproduction at the whole-organism level. Rotifers and other small zooplankters like cladocerans and copepods are ideal for the experimental analysis of the relationship between endpoints.
