Harnessing Ascidians as Model Organisms for Environmental Risk Assessment

Amalia Rosner, Baruch Rinkevich

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) often relies on a restricted set of species as bio-indicators, introducing uncertainty when modeling complex environmental variables. This may lead to oversimplified or erroneous risk assessments. Ascidians, marine filter-feeding sessile chordates, are valuable models for scientific research in various biological fields such as stem cell biology, embryogenesis, regeneration, innate immunity, and developmental biology. Their global distribution, sensitivity to pollutants, high abundance, mass sexual reproduction, and habitation in coastal areas impacted by anthropogenic pollution make them excellent indicators for monitoring marine pollution and global environmental changes, including biological invasions and species diversity diminution cases. Despite their potential as environmental bioindicators, ascidians remain underutilized in ERAs (≤0.13% of ERA studies), particularly in the field of chemical pollution impact assessment, primarily due to a lack of standardization. This underrepresentation poses a challenge for accurate modeling, especially in models relying on a broad range of species (e.g., Species Sensitivity Distributions). Given these constraints, expanding the use of ascidians in ERAs could improve the comprehension and precision of environmental changes and their assessments. This underscores the necessity for future research to establish standardized testing protocols and choose the most suitable ascidian species for inclusion in ERAs.

Original languageEnglish
Article number232
JournalEnvironments - MDPI
Volume11
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2024
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 by the authors.

Keywords

  • ascidians
  • biodiversity
  • Botryllus schlosseri
  • Cionaspp
  • Didemnum vexillum
  • ERA
  • invasive species
  • non-model organisms
  • pollution
  • toxicity

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
  • General Environmental Science

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