about SPEAR

Web Applications

Click a button below to start an application
Click here to start the SPEAR Calculator!

The New SPEAR Calculator has been completly redesigned, but you can still start the old version here.
Click here to start the TU Calculator!

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Development

 
Department
System Ecotoxicology

PD Dr. Matthias Liess
Dr. Mikhail Beketov
Dr. Mira Kattwinkel

About SPEAR

SPEAR (Species At Risk) is a bioindicator system based on biological traits and focused on various types of contaminants in fresh waters. The traits used are responsive to the effects of particular toxicants (e.g. physiological sensitivity) and associated recovery (e.g. generation time). SPEAR bioindicators are developed to complement existing bioassessment methods and indices in order to assess effects of toxicants. Currently, two SPEAR-indicators exist: SPEARpesticides and SPEARorganic designed to detect and quantify effects of pesticides (insecticide toxicity) and general organic toxicants (e.g. petrochemicals, synthetic surfactants) respectively.



Liess M, Schäfer R, Schriever C, 2008. The footprint of pesticide stress in communities (1)



Key paper about SPEAR


With SPEAR you can

  • estimate exposure of certain types of toxicants (e.g. pesticides) using field monitoring data on invertebrates (e.g. for the water framework directive (WFD))
  • quantify effects of toxicants on invertebrate communities
  • evaluate toxicant effects on meso-microcosms

More about what can you do with SPEAR

The web application to calculate SPEAR values for a given measurement (macroinvertebrate data) is now online. To calculate toxicity in water samples the TU-Calculator can be used.

With SPEAR Calculator you can:

  • identify effects of toxicants using your invertebrate data
  • extend the SPEAR database with your inputs
  • have the chance to share and discuss your related experience and post your papers on this web-page.

As any bioindicator, SPEAR has certain limitations. SPEARpesticides is not recommended for application in temporary streams. Further validation is required to understand sensitivity and specificity of the SPEAR indices in habitats where they have not been previously investigated. Thus, although it was shown that SPEARpesticides is stable in reference sites and independent of natural environmental factors in large rivers of Europa and Siberia, the dose-response relationships of this index for toxicants remains to be investigated.

  1. (1) Liess M, Schäfer R, Schriever C, 2008. The footprint of pesticide stress in communities - species traits reveal community effects of toxicants. Science of the Total Environment, 406, 484-490.   → Request PDF