Development of a Low-Cost Ecotoxicological Bioassay Based on the Feeding Behaviour of the Aquatic Snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum (Hydrobiidae, Mollusca).

Conventional acute tests are not suited to assess the effects of toxicants, because they do not use the concentrations that are usually found in natural ecosystems. By contrast, nonlethal realistic concentrations may cause deleterious effects on animal fitness as a consequence of behaviour impairment. Behaviour is a good integrative variable of complex biochemical and physiological processes. Therefore, bioassays based on behaviour are a useful tool in ecotoxicology. In this study, two bioassays were conducted: (1) acute bioassay (48 h) of acetone on the aquatic snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum, and (2) video-recording behavioural bioassay with pulse exposures to acetone to assess its effects on feeding behaviour. In the latter, animals were exposed to three pulses of acetone (24 h each) with 6 days of postexposure after each pulse. This design allowed us to assess the degree of feeding behaviour recovery after exposure and the effects of repeated pulses. Our results show that postexposure periods have an important effect on the recovery of normal feeding behaviour and that this developed bioassay is an ecotoxicological tool with a relatively low-cost and a short-time consuming. The application of this new tool to different ecotoxicological requirements is discussed.