Bioindicator - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Biological indicators are species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

used to monitor the health of an environment or ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

. They are any biological species or group of species whose function, population, or status can be used to determine ecosystem or environmental integrity. An example of such a group are the copepods and other small water crustaceans present in many water bodies. Such organisms are monitored for changes (biochemical, physiological, or behavioural) that may indicate a problem within their ecosystem. Bioindicators can tell us about the cumulative effects of different pollutants

Pollution

Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...

in the ecosystem and about how long a problem may have been present, which physical and chemical testing cannot.

Description

A biological monitor, or biomonitor, is defined as an organism

Organism

In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...

that provides quantitative

Quantitative property

A quantitative property is one that exists in a range of magnitudes, and can therefore be measured with a number. Measurements of any particular quantitative property are expressed as a specific quantity, referred to as a unit, multiplied by a number. Examples of physical quantities are distance,...

information on the quality of the environment

Environment (biophysical)

The biophysical environment is the combined modeling of the physical environment and the biological life forms within the environment, and includes all variables, parameters as well as conditions and modes inside the Earth's biosphere. The biophysical environment can be divided into two categories:...

around it. Therefore, a good biomonitor will indicate the presence of the pollutant and also attempt to provide additional information about the amount and intensity of the exposure.

A bioindicator is an organism or biological response that reveals the presence of the pollutants by the occurence of typical symptoms or measurable responses, and is therefore more qualitative.
These organisms (or communities of organisms) deliver information on alterations in the environment or the quantity of environmental pollutant

Pollutant

A pollutant is a waste material that pollutes air, water or soil, and is the cause of pollution.Three factors determine the severity of a pollutant: its chemical nature, its concentration and its persistence. Some pollutants are biodegradable and therefore will not persist in the environment in the...

s by changing in one of the following ways: physiologically, chemically or behaviourally.
The information can be deduced through the study of:

their content of certain element
Chemical element
A chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus. Familiar examples of elements include carbon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, copper, gold, mercury, and lead.As of November 2011, 118 elements...

s or compound
Chemical compound
A chemical compound is a pure chemical substance consisting of two or more different chemical elements that can be separated into simpler substances by chemical reactions. Chemical compounds have a unique and defined chemical structure; they consist of a fixed ratio of atoms that are held together...

s
their morphological
Morphology (biology)
In biology, morphology is a branch of bioscience dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features....

or cellular structure
Cell (biology)
The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is often called the building block of life. The Alberts text discusses how the "cellular building blocks" move to shape developing embryos....
metabolic-biochemical processes
behaviour, or
population
Population
A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...

structure(s).

The importance and relevance of biomonitors, rather than man-made equipment, is justified by the statement: "There is no better indicator of the status of a species or a system than a species or system itself."

The use of a biomonitor is described as biological monitoring

Biomonitoring

Aquatic biomonitoring is the science of inferring the ecological condition of rivers, lakes, streams, and wetlands by examining the organisms that live there...

(abbr. biomonitoring) and is the use of the properties of an organism to obtain information on certain aspects of the biosphere. Biomonitoring of air pollutants can be passive

Passive

Passive may refer to:* "Passive" , by A Perfect Circle* Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages* Passive house, a standard for energy efficiency in buildings* Passive psi, psychic abilities involving cognition...

or active

Active

Active may refer to:Human Activity* An active lifestyle, a lifestyle characterized by frequent or various social, intellectual, and physical activities* An "active" in a fraternity or sororityComputers and electronics...

. Passive methods observe plants growing naturally within the area of interest. Active methods detect the presence of air pollutants by placing test plants of known response and genotype

Genotype

The genotype is the genetic makeup of a cell, an organism, or an individual usually with reference to a specific character under consideration...

into the study area.

Bioaccumulative

Bioaccumulation

Bioaccumulation refers to the accumulation of substances, such as pesticides, or other organic chemicals in an organism. Bioaccumulation occurs when an organism absorbs a toxic substance at a rate greater than that at which the substance is lost...

indicators are frequently regarded as biomonitors.

Depending on the organism selected and their use, there are several types of bioindicators.

Plant indicators

The presence or absence of certain plant or other vegetative life in an ecosystem can provide important clues about the health of the environment: environmental preservation.

There are several types of plant biomonitors, including moss

Moss

Mosses are small, soft plants that are typically 1–10 cm tall, though some species are much larger. They commonly grow close together in clumps or mats in damp or shady locations. They do not have flowers or seeds, and their simple leaves cover the thin wiry stems...

es, lichen

Lichen

Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...

s, tree bark

Bark

Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner...

, bark pockets, tree rings, leaves

Leaves

-History:Vocalist Arnar Gudjonsson was formerly the guitarist with Mower, and he was joined by Hallur Hallsson , Arnar Ólafsson , Bjarni Grímsson , and Andri Ásgrímsson . Late in 2001 they played with Emiliana Torrini and drew early praise from the New York Times...

, and fungi.

Lichen
Lichen
Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...

s are organisms comprising both fungi and algae
Algae
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

. (They are not plants.) Lichens are found on rocks and tree trunks, and they respond to environmental changes in forests, including changes in forest structure--conservation biology
Conservation biology
Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...

, air quality
Air pollution
Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or cause damage to the natural environment or built environment, into the atmosphere....

, and climate. The disappearance of lichens in a forest may indicate environmental stresses, such as high levels of sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide is the chemical compound with the formula . It is released by volcanoes and in various industrial processes. Since coal and petroleum often contain sulfur compounds, their combustion generates sulfur dioxide unless the sulfur compounds are removed before burning the fuel...

, sulfur-based pollutants, and nitrogen-oxides
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...

.
The composition and total biomass of algal species in aquatic systems serves as an important metric for organic pollution and nutrient loading such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

There are genetically engineered organisms, that help us indicate toxicity

Toxicity

Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage a living or non-living organisms. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a substructure of the organism, such as a cell or an organ , such as the liver...

levels in the environment

Environment (biophysical)

; e.g., a type of genetically engineered grass that grows a different colour if there are toxins in the soil.

Animal indicators, and toxins

An increase or decrease in an animal population

Population biology

Population biology is a study of populations of organisms, especially the regulation of population size, life history traits such as clutch size, and extinction...

may indicate damage to the ecosystem caused by pollution

Pollution

. For example, if pollution causes the depletion of important food sources, animal species dependent upon these food sources will also be reduced in number: population decline

Population decline

Population decline can refer to the decline in population of any organism, but this article refers to population decline in humans. It is a term usually used to describe any great reduction in a human population...

. Overpopulation

Overpopulation

Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...

, can be the result of opportunistic species growth. In addition to monitoring the size and number of certain species, other mechanisms of animal indication include monitoring the concentration of toxin

Toxin

A toxin is a poisonous substance produced within living cells or organisms; man-made substances created by artificial processes are thus excluded...

s in animal tissues, or monitoring the rate at which deformities arise in animal populations.

Microbial indicators and chemical pollutants

Microorganism

A microorganism or microbe is a microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters, or no cell at all...

s can be used as indicators of aquatic

Aquatic ecosystem

An aquatic ecosystem is an ecosystem in a body of water. Communities of organisms that are dependent on each other and on their environment live in aquatic ecosystems. The two main types of aquatic ecosystems are marine ecosystems and freshwater ecosystems....

or terrestrial ecosystem health. Found in large quantities, microorganisms are easier to sample than other organisms. Some microorganisms will produce new proteins, called stress proteins, when exposed to contaminants like cadmium

Cadmium

Cadmium is a chemical element with the symbol Cd and atomic number 48. This soft, bluish-white metal is chemically similar to the two other stable metals in group 12, zinc and mercury. Similar to zinc, it prefers oxidation state +2 in most of its compounds and similar to mercury it shows a low...

and benzene

Benzene

Benzene is an organic chemical compound. It is composed of 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with 1 hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom, with the molecular formula C6H6....

. These stress proteins can be used as an early warning system to detect high levels of pollution.

Microbial indicators in oil and gas exploration

Microbial Prospecting for Oil and Gas (MPOG) is often used in frontier basins to identify prospective areas for oil and gas occurrences. In many cases oil and gas is known to seep toward the surface as a hydrocarbon

Hydrocarbon

In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons from which one hydrogen atom has been removed are functional groups, called hydrocarbyls....

reservoir will usually leak or have leaked towards the surface through buoyancy

Buoyancy

In physics, buoyancy is a force exerted by a fluid that opposes an object's weight. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus a column of fluid, or an object submerged in the fluid, experiences greater pressure at the bottom of the...

forces overcoming sealing pressures. These hydrocarbons can alter the chemical and microbial occurrences found in the near surface soils or can be picked up directly. Techniques used for MPOG include DNA analysis, simple bug counts after culturing a soil sample in a hydrocarbon based medium or by looking at the consumption of hydrocarbon gases in a culture cell.

Macroinvertebrate bioindicators

Macroinvertebrates are useful and convenient indicators of the ecological health

Ecological health

Ecological health or ecological integrity or ecological damage are the symptoms of an ecosystem's pending loss of carrying capacity, its ability to perform ecological services, or a pending ecocide, due to cumulative causes such as pollution. it can also be defined as farming so as to minimize the...

of a waterbody or river. They are almost always present, and are easy to sample and identify. The sensitivity of the range of macroinvertebrates found will enable an objective judgement of the ecological condition to be made.

In Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, the SIGNAL method has been developed and is used by researchers and community Waterwatch groups to monitor water health.

In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...

(EPA) has published Rapid Bioassessment Protocols, based on macroinvertebrates, as well as periphyton

Periphyton

Periphyton are a complex mixture of algae, cyanobacteria, heterotrophic microbes, and detritus that are attached to submerged surfaces in most aquatic ecosystems. It serves as an important food source for invertebrates, tadpoles, and some fish. It can also absorb contaminants; removing them from...

and fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

. These protocols are used by many federal, state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

and local government agencies to design biosurvey

Biosurvey

A biosurvey, or biological survey, is a scientific study of organisms to assess the condition of an ecological resource, such as a water body.-Overview:...

s for assessment of water quality

Water quality

Water quality is the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of water. It is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species and or to any human need or purpose. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which...

. Volunteer stream monitoring organizations around the U.S., working in cooperation with government agencies, typically use macroinvertebrate methods. The species identification procedures are conducted in the field without the use of specialized equipment, and the techniques can be easily taught in volunteer training sessions.

In South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, the Southern African Scoring System (SASS) method was developed as a rapid bioassessment technique, based on benthic macroinvertebrates, and is used for the assessment of water quality in Southern African rivers. The SASS aquatic biomonitoring tool has been refined over the past 30 years and is now on the fifth version (SASS5) which has been specifically modified in accordance with international standards, namely the ISO/IEC 17025

ISO/IEC 17025

ISO/IEC 17025 is the main standard used by testing and calibration laboratories. Originally known as ISO/IEC Guide 25, ISO/IEC 17025 was initially issued by the International Organization for Standardization in 1999. There are many commonalities with the ISO 9000 standard, but ISO/IEC 17025 adds in...

protocol. The SASS5 method is used by the South African Department of Water Affairs as a standard method for River Health Assessment, which feeds the national River Health Programme and the national Rivers Database.

Related Journal

Environmental Bioindicators

External links

"About Biological Indicators" - U.S. EPA
Environmental Biomarkers Initiative at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - U.S. Department of Energy, Richland, WA
Volunteer Monitoring Program - U.S. EPA
Waterwatch Australia
Pyxine cocoes Nyl. - A Foliose Lichen as a Potential Bioindicator/Biomonitor of Air Pollution in Philippines: An Update by Isidro T. Savillo
The National River Health Programme - South Africa

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