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Updated: May 22, 2026

An Anaerobic Biosensor Assay for the Detection of Mercury and Cadmium
Published on: December 17, 2018
Physiological sensitivity of freshwater macroinvertebrates to heavy metals
Egina Malaj1, Matthias Grote, Ralf B Schäfer
1Department of Effect-Directed Analysis, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany. egina.malaj@ufz.de
Abstract:
Macroinvertebrate species traits, such as physiological sensitivity, have successfully been introduced in trait-based bioassessment approaches and are important predictors of species sensitivity in the field. The authors ranked macroinvertebrate species according to their physiological sensitivity to heavy metals using toxicity data from acute laboratory assays. Rankings for each of the heavy metals, Cd, Cu, Cr, Ni, Pb, Zn, and Hg, were standardized based on all available species data. Rankings for different heavy metals on the species level showed no significant difference between compounds and were reasonably well correlated pairwise (0.50
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