Preliminary assessment of terrestrial microalgae isolated from lichens as testing species for environmental monitoring: Lichen phycobionts present high sensitivity to environmental micropollutants

• Lichen phycobionts are microalgae with potential for low cost microbioassays.
• Adaptations as anhydrobiosis make phycobionts suitable for especial applications.
• Phycobiont chlorophyll autoflourescence is sensitive to pharmaceuticals.
• Suspensions' optical properties reflect pollutant induced effects at population level.
• Asterochloris erici is sensitive to micropollutants and readily available.

Bioassays constitute a tool for pollution analysis providing a holistic approach and high-quality indication of the toxicity. Microbioassays allow evaluating the toxicity of many samples, implying lower costs and enabling routine monitoring and pollution control. But tests conducted so far are limited to the use of a small number of taxa. Lichens are excellent bioindicators of pollution with great ecological significance. Studies show that the phycobiont is more sensitive to pollutants than the mycobiont. Phycobiont have features such as adaptation to anhydrobiosis and relatively rapid growth in vitro, making them suitable for microbioassays. Our aim is to determine the sensitivity of phycobionts to the pharmaceutical micropollutants carbamazepine and diclofenac as a preliminary step for the development of a toxicity microbioassay based on phycobionts. Optical dispersion and chlorophyll autofluorescence were used as endpoints of toxicity on two algal species showing that suspensions present cyclic and taxon specific patterns of aggregation. Trebouxia TR9 suspensions present a very high grade of aggregation while Asterochloris erici cells do not. Both micropollutants alter optical properties of the suspensions of both species. No significant alteration of chlorophyll autofluorescence by carbamazepine is observed. A. erici chlorophyll autofluorescence is extremely sensitive to diclofenac but the effect is not dependent on the drug concentration or on the time of exposure. Differently, TR9 only shows punctual chlorophyll alterations. Fluctuations in optical dispersion may indicate changes in the population structure of the species, including reproductive strategy. A. erici seems more sensitive to micropollutants, is better characterized and is available from commercial collections.