Folsomia candida and Soil Quality Testing

Environmental risk assessment is for a large part based on responses of reproduction and survival of test organisms. Usually, individuals are exposed in standardized short (acute) or long-term experiments. After this exposure period the number of surviving adults and the number of juveniles are scored, and compared to a control situation.

The collembolan species Folsomia candida is an internationally recognized test species that is frequently applied in terrestrial ecotoxicology (Fountain and Hopkin, 2005). A “F. candida test” uses ten 10 to 12 day old animals, and lasts for 28 days (ISO guidelines).

To transform F. candida into an ecogenomic indicator organism for soil quality testing an EST sequencing project was conducted and a microarray developed (Agilent platform). Sequence data of the processed and assembled ESTs are stored in Collembase. The first results from microarray and Q-PCR experiments will follow soon.....

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Fountain MT, Hopkin SP: Folsomia candida (Collembola): A "standard" soil arthropod. Annual Review of Entomology 2005, 50: 201-222.