How to Identify a Model Species

Model organisms are responsible for many important discoveries and advancements in science. This group of species shares a suite of traits making them uniquely suited to be models including being easy to maintain and genetically manipulated within a laboratory setting. Aquatic model organisms are specially positioned for ecotoxicity assessment because of their ability to serve as predictors of toxicity for other organisms, as well as sentinel species for environmental health. The standards of regulatory toxicity assessment and the organisms used in these assays are dictated by environmental agencies. A diversity of freshwater, estuarine, and marine algae, invertebrates, and fish are currently used as model species for ecotoxicity assessment. The popularity of model organism research has created a bias for those studies and limited the diversity of the data produced. However, the expansion of genomic technologies has opened the door to a host of emerging and alternative model organisms. Therefore, though, historically, the number of ecotoxicity model organisms has been limited, the definition is expanding to include a broader range of well-studied organisms.