Using Ostracoda to Reveal Anthropogenic Impacts on Water Quality

A new paper published in Earth-Science Reviews examines all studied responses of Ostracoda to anthropogenic environmental stresses, highlighting their benefits as indicators of human impacts on water quality and indicating areas for future implementation

The impact of human activities on aquatic ecosystems is a growing concern, requiring reliable methods for monitoring water quality and environmental changes. In recent years, ostracods, also known as seed shrimp, have been used as bioindicators of water quality, but their ability to provide reliable, quantifiable data across aquatic environments is still little-understood.

Now, a new review paper led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and Friedrich Schiller University Jena explores the role of ostracods as bioindicators of anthropogenic pressures on aquatic ecosystems. It also examines their relevance in meeting the requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the EU’s legal framework for assessing water quality and ecological status.

The new study's findings indicate that ostracods serve as highly valuable indicators of environmental disturbances, exhibiting sensitivity to nutrient input, heavy metal pollution, and oil spills. The researchers also determined that, while challenges in standardization and gaps in research still exist, the use of ostracods as bioindicators is in alignment with the recommendations outlined in the WFD.

“Based on the species diversity and abundance of ostracods, we can not only reconstruct current and past environmental conditions, but even predict future changes. This can be particularly important for agriculture and water management with regard to climate change,” says Dr. Olga Schmitz, researcher at MPI GEA and lead author of the study.

These findings provide a framework for integrating ostracods into environmental monitoring programs such as the WFD, which mandates that all EU water bodies achieve a “Good” ecological status, using benthic invertebrates, fish, macrophytes, and phytobenthos for assessment. In such programs, ostracods can help establish reference conditions by providing baseline data on historical changes, aiding in setting restoration benchmarks.

“We need to know the natural state,” says Prof. Dr. Peter Frenzel from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, who is co-leading this project,  “and we also need cost efficient methods that provide reliable information about the water quality.”

The research shows that integrating ostracods into existing water quality regulations could enhance ecological restoration efforts and improve the effectiveness of bioindicator frameworks. In the future, studies should prioritize the standardization of ostracod-based assessment methodologies and the implementation of long-term monitoring programs.