“…Morgan, et al (2007) also noted that the genetic background of a population can confound biomarker assays, a further indication that the balance between the sensitive and detoxified metal pools can be altered by microevolutionary events. Given that comprehensive phylogenetic studies on earthworms 5 using mitochondrial and nuclear markers have recently revealed high intra-species genetic diversity (Velavan, et al, 2007;Novo, et al, 2008) and deeply divergent genetic lineages, possibly in some cases corresponding with cryptic species (King, et al, 2008;Shepeleva, et al, 2008;Pérez-Losada, et al, 2009), it is a major omission that, to the best of our knowledge, no studies hitherto have explicitly attempted to describe the cellular partitioning of metals in field populations of earthworms with respect to exposure history and genotype. A recent report (Langdon, et al, 2009) that populations of the species Lumbricus rubellus inhabiting abandoned arsenic mine sites have evolved resistance to the metalloid brings the omission into sharp focus.…”