What kind of invertebrate would you suggest for monitoring (sporadic) PCB micro-contamination in a small stream (from waste dump soil leaching)? The stream bed is of fine gravel and sand, fishes are not available... Maybe freshwater mussels, warms, larvae of arthropods?
Freshwater mussels would be a good choice as they can live for many years. That said I would think you would have to obtain individuals that hadn't been exposed to PCB already. AND it would be good to chose a species that is already in the watershed. I have a biblio database with 21 papers on freshwater mollusks and PCB's. If interested go to http://ellipse.inhs.uiuc.edu:591/mollusk/biblio.html and type in PCB.
Dear Kevin, thanks a lot for suggesting the above approach and for sharing your e-database (good search engine!). I'll try to find mollusks in that waterbody: I fear there are not bivalves but only small gastropods. This is the reason why my option will probably be ANNELIDS.
Bests
In case there are no mollusks, can any other organism be used ? I suppose so, given that organic chemicals in water tend to get preferentially concentrated in organic tissues (partition coefficient Kow), any organism would have a higher concentration than that in water, as long as that organism is not very mobile.
For monitoring PCBs compounds in freshwater, i suggest the use gasteropod organisms and the caging stragtegy.
Is the waters salty or fresh? I think chironomidae larvae can be used to monitor PCBs in continental waters.
Freshwater! Have such chironomids to be collected in a particular season?
In general I would go for filter-feeding organisms, and freshwater mussels are an excellent choice, if available. If there is a reference area, where you know PCB concentrations are very low, you can collect the mussels there and then put them in cages in your study area. This approach is generally better than using organisms from the study area, because then you have to deal with adaptation, selection, etc. of the local population.
Finally, I would add the analysis of some effect biomarker to the chemical analysis.
You can use amphipods (eg Gammarus sp.), if availables, or with the strategy of caging (be careful using non-invasive species). They are good organisms accumulates all xenobiotics (e.g., heavy metals, organic pollutants ...). The advantage of Gammarus sp. is that they live in the water and close to the sediment (such as gravel), which could lead to characterize the pollution of water and sediment (without distinction).
I suggest a mollusk bivalve available along the year; This is important to have a spacial and temporal comparison of chemical an biological data between sites.
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