Participatory hackathon to determine ecological relevant endpoints for a neurotoxin to aquatic and benthic invertebrates

Abstract

The aim of this study is twofold: i) to determine innovative yet sensitive endpoints for sulfoxaflor and ii) to develop best practices for innovative teaching in ecotoxicology. To this end, a group of 52 MSc students participated in an environmental hackathon, during which they did creative toxicity testing on 5 freshwater invertebrate species: Daphnia magna, Chironomus riparius, Asellus aquaticus, Lymnaea stagnalis, and Anisus vortex. Involving the students in an active learning environment stimulated increased creativity and productivity. In total, 28 endpoints were investigated, including standard endpoints (e.g., mortality) as well as biomechanistic and energy-related endpoints. Despite high variances in the results, likely linked to the limited lab experience of the students and interpersonal differences, a promising set of endpoints was selected for further investigation. A more targeted follow-up experiment focused on the most promising organism and set of endpoints: biomechanistic endpoints of C. riparius larvae. Larvae were exposed to a range of sulfoxaflor concentrations (0.90–67.2 μg/L) for 21 days. Video tracking showed that undulation and swimming were significantly reduced at 11.1 μg sulfoxaflor/L after 9 days of exposure, and an EC50 = 10.6 μg/L for mean velocities of the larvae in the water phase was found. Biomechanistic endpoints proved much more sensitive than mortality, for which an LC50 value of 116 μg/L was found on Day 9. Our results show that performing a hackathon with students has excellent potential to find sensitive endpoints that can subsequently be verified using more targeted and professional follow-up experiments. Furthermore, utilising hackathon events in teaching can increase students’ enthusiasm about ecotoxicology, driving better learning experiences.