Addressing the recovery of feeding rates in post-exposure feeding bioassays: Cyathura carinata as a case study

Post-exposure bioassays are used in environmental assessment as a cost-effective tool, but the effects of organism's recovery after exposure to pollutant has not yet been addressed in detail. The recoveries of post-exposure feeding rates after being exposed to two sublethal concentrations of cadmium during two different exposure periods (48. h and 96. h) were evaluated under laboratory conditions using the estuarine isopod Cyathura carinata. Results showed that feeding depression was a stable endpoint up to 24. h after cadmium exposure, which is useful for ecotoxicological bioassays.This research was partially funded by research project 3M-RECITAL (LTER/BIA-BEC/0019/2009). M. Martinez-Haro has a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development (PIEF-GA-2011-299747) within the 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013) of the European Commission. P. Acevedo is supported by the ‘Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad’ (MINECO) and ‘Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha’ (UCLM) through a ‘Ramón y Cajal’ contract (RYC-2012-11970).Peer Reviewe