title: Comparing the sensitivity of soil invertebrates to pesticides with that of Eisenia fetida.
abstract: The sole routine testing of the standard earthworm Eisenia fetida for the terrestrial risk assessment of pesticides has been under much debate since other soil invertebrates may be more sensitive than this standard test species. However, the very low availability of laboratory toxicity data for taxa other than E. fetida has greatly hampered sensitivity comparisons. In the present study, the relative tolerance (T(rel)) approach was used to enable comparing toxicity thresholds obtained from the US-EPA ECOTOX database, for main terrestrial taxonomic groups and pesticidal types of action (insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and other) separately. Analyses confirmed previously reported lower and higher sensitivity of collembolans to fungicides and insecticides, respectively. However, various other discrepancies in susceptibility relative to E. fetida were encountered as indicated by species sensitivity distributions and/or calculated 95% confidence intervals of T(rel) values. Arachnids and isopods were found to be more sensitive to insecticides, and nematodes to fungicides, as compared to E. fetida. Implications of study findings for the terrestrial risk assessment of pesticides are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Technical University of Lisbon, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisbon, Portugal. mdaam@isa.utl.pt
authors.forename: Michiel A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Daam
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Leitão
authors.forename: Maria José
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Cerejeira
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Paulo Sousa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D054750:Ecotoxicology / Q000379:methods*; D009835:Oligochaeta / Q000187:drug effects*; D010573:Pesticide Residues / Q000633:toxicity*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012987:Soil; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D010573:Pesticide Residues; D012987:Soil