Morphological anomalies and ecological insights as indicators of environmental stress in fish: which issues could contribute to eel quality assessment ?

The aim of the presentation was to illustrate some work on fish ecology carried out in the Fish Ecology Lab besides eel research, to find possible overlapping issues than can apply to eel quality assessment. Some research topics in fact concern the use of fish as an integrated tool for ecosystem risk assessment, that allow an integrated picture of re-sponses at environmental stress at different levels of biological organization. Levels of survey that were illustrated were: subcellular (micronucleus test in fishes), cellular (sense organs –olfactory cells and lateral line cells in normal conditions and with anomalies), tissue and organ level (skeleton anomalies as integrated descriptors of environmental quality). Some of these could give useful insights also for effects of contamination on eel.