About SPEAR

SPEAR 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: SPEAR_pesticides and SPEAR_organic designed to detect and quantify effects of pesticides (insecticide toxicity) and general organic toxicants (e.g. petrochemicals, synthetic surfactants) respectively.

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

More about what can you do with SPEAR

The web application to calculate SPEAR values for a given measurement (macroinvertebrate data) is now online. Its advantage is the independence of platforms (basic SPEAR calculations will also be available in the ASTERICS program).

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. SPEAR_pesticides 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 SPEAR_pesticides 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.