Intercalibration of ecotoxicity testing protocols with Artemia franciscana

The brine shrimp, Artemia spp., is widely used in ecotoxicology as a target biological model. Althoughseveral protocols were available in the early 1980s, only the 24-h acute mortality toxicity test was evalu-ated in a European intercalibration exercise during that period. Nevertheless, documentation of standardmethods serving to provide specifications, guidelines or detailed characteristics of the 24-h protocolis still unavailable. This paper present the results of an intercalibration study of three toxicity-testingprotocols using Artemia franciscana: (a) the 24-h static acute mortality test, (b) the 48-h static hatchingtest and (c) the 14-d static-renewal long-term mortality test. A first tier of experiments was conductedby a reference laboratory, which investigated the repeatability of the three methods. The feasibilityand reproducibility of these protocols were then investigated by an intercomparison exercise involving11 participants for the acute mortality test, seven for the acute hatching test and nine for the long-termmortality test. Protocols were tested on reference toxicants (copper sulphate pentahydrate and sodiumdodecyl sulphate). The coefficients of variation were <20% and <50% for intra- and interlaboratory activi-ties, respectively. These results encourage the standardization of the proposed methods and their use asregulatory procedures.