Ary Hoffman, Program Leader

"What CESAR biomonitoring research is really doing is taking advantage of the massive amounts of invertebrate biodiversity in environments and DNA techniques to develop smarter ways of monitoring environmental stresses; this provides a much more detailed picture of what is wrong with an environment and how it can be fixed

The Biomonitoring Program 

The central aim of the biomonitoring program is to come up with better indicators for monitoring environmental stress. Primarily, we focus on invertebrates as indicators. Invertebrates make excellent environmental indicators due to their diversity, abundance, diverse array of responses to environmental change and the important role they play in many ecosystems. The biomonitoring program has evolved into two components:

• Aquatic biomonitoring
• Terrestrial biomonitoring

Aquatic Biomonitoring

The aquatic biomonitoring program primarily targets macroinvertebrates identified to species-level as indicators of pollution. The program utilizes the broad range of pollution sensitivities found in aquatic macroinvertebrates, notably chironomids, and uses these to assess whether aquatic environments are impaired from pollution. A field based microcosm method for pollution assessment and molecular approaches for chironomid species identification represent some of our research achievements.

Other research in the aquatic program covers:

• Investigating the impact of exotic fish species
• Conservation strategies for endangered fish species
• Morphological trait variation of Egeria densa in response to sediment pollution

Terrestrial Biomonitoring 

The terrestrial biomonitoring group uses invertebrates to measure current impacts and develop methods to monitor change in response to changes in practice across a range of agricultural and natural environments. We provide for a variety of end users such as GWRDC, GRDC, various CMAs, wine companies such Fosters, Hardy’s and De Bortoli, and individual grape and grain growers.

There is a widespread growing interest in reducing the impact of contaminants while protecting and conserving our natural resource base for future generations. This has led to a call for new indicators and strategies to increase biodiversity on farms and in agricultural landscapes, and for developing ways to decrease the  effects of chemicals and increase sustainable food production. To be useful in measuring change, indicators must provide measurable and repeatable information in response to the question being asked about the environment. Invertebrates are abundant and diverse, sensitive and responsive to change and functionally important in that they facilitate soil turnover, include many pests, and play an essential role in pest suppression. The diversity of invertebrates in agricultural and natural environments and the important roles they play combined with their responsiveness to change gives them enormous potential to be used as indicators.