ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses primarily methods for tests with four species of North American echinoids including three species of sea urchins and the closely related sand dollar of the Pacific Coast. These species include: Purple urchin: Arbacia punctulata, Purple urchin: Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, Green urchin: Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis and Sand dollar: Dendraster excentricus. Sea urchin sperm cell tests are usually surrogate tests in both of these respects: they are intended to provide toxicity information for the protection of other marine organisms and the typical 60-min duration of the sperm test exposure probably exceeds real-world exposure conditions for sea urchin sperm. The chief advantages of the sea urchin sperm cell test are its rapidity, small test volume, and great potential for using many test treatments and multiple replications of each treatment. In practice, the standardization of the sea urchin sperm cell test has seen a number of variations on the basic design.
