Daphnia as Environmental Sentinels
Using Daphnia as model organisms for ecotoxicology, chemical risk assessment, and histopathological characterization.
Daphnia are keystone species of freshwater habitats widely used as model organisms in ecology and evolutionary biology. Their small size, wide geographic distribution, and sensitivity to chemicals make them useful as environmental sentinels in regulatory toxicology and chemical risk assessment.
Biomolecular (-omic) assessments of responses to chemical toxicity reveal detailed molecular signatures that become more powerful when correlated with other phenotypic outcomes — such as behavioral, physiological, or histopathological — for comparative validation and regulatory relevance.
However, the lack of histopathology or tissue phenotype characterization of this species presently limits our ability to assess cellular mechanisms of toxicity. Our work aims to fill this critical gap by establishing comprehensive phenotypic frameworks for Daphnia toxicology studies.