Screening aquatic ecosystems for mutagens with fern bioassays

Recent researches on the royal fern, Osmunda regalis, have documented a high incidence of post-zygotic mutational damage in a population growing in a river heavily polluted with paper processing wastes, whereas genetic studies of nearby populations in nonpolluted environments failed to detect mutational damage. Intensive genetic and cytogenetic studies of mutation in O. regalis indicates that natural populations of homosporous ferns may be useful in situ bioassay systems for monitoring the presence of mutagens in aquatic ecosystems. Since these organisms are long-lived perennials with an ontogenetic system which stores mutational damage, they can be manipulated to give an integrated estimate of mutational damage for specified blocks of time (in units of years). Thus, the fern bioassay may be an inexpensive means of detecting both chronic low dose and episodic high dose inputs of mutagenic pollutants into aquatic ecosystems. The fern mutagen bioassay is based upon the detection of numerous categories of post-zygotic mutation load in natural fern populations. The frequency of sporophytic and embryonic lethals, leaf or root mutations, auxotrophic gametophytic mutations as well as numerous phenotypic alterations of gametophyte morphology can be routinely detected and quantified. In addition, various two-break chromosome aberrations (paracentric inversions, reciprocal translocations and ring chromosomes) can be readily screened for in the spore mother cells of many homosporous ferns.