Research Product

This chapter presents an overview of safety tests of microbial insecticides to estuarine and marine organisms that have been performed to date. Approaches and experimental design, species of MPCAs tested, systems used, and endpoints and results evaluated for determiniation of risks of MPCAs to nontarget marine species are reviewed. The review order is by exemplary microbial agents, as follows: viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoa. The studies presented describe relative simple procedures for exposing single species nontarget hosts to MPCAs. They incorporate a positive control bioassay to confirm the infectivity of the MPCA and are relatively inexpensive and reliable. Studies are usually based on the null hypothesis that infection and relative effects of nontarget host will not occur. To date, this null hypothesis has not been rejected based on results obtained following experimental exposure of nontarget estuarine species to relatively high concentrations of MPCAs.