“…In addition to cell density measurements, flow cytometry can be used to analyse several morphological parameters, such as relative cell size and complexity and relative fluorescence, which is related to pigment content (Marie et al, 2005;Stachowski-Haberkorn et al, 2013;Mansano et al, 2017). Using fluorescent dyes specific to particular physiological functions, several studies have shown the usefulness of flow cytometry to indicate the toxicity of certain chemicals to microalgae (Prado et al, 2009(Prado et al, , 2012Rioboo et al, 2011;Stachowski-Haberkorn et al, 2013;Seoane et al, 2014Seoane et al, , 2017Esperanza et al, 2015;Dupraz et al, 2016;González-Pleiter et al, 2017). The most commonly investigated physiological functions in these studies are viability, general metabolic activity (often measured by non-specific esterase activity) and reactive oxygen species (ROS), whose accumulation following exposure to certain contaminants can cause oxidative stress and thus cell damage.…”