Avoidance tests with earthworms and collembolans were conducted to demonstrate their feasibility as early screening tools for assessing the toxic potential of metal-polluted soils. Four different soils, with different degrees of metal contamination, were obtained from an abandoned mining area. All possible paired combinations were assessed for an avoidance response by the organisms. Data revealed that both species were able to avoid the most contaminated soils at the center of the ore extraction and treatment areas compared to those collected further away from the mine. However, earthworms and springtails differed in sensitivity to metals, especially when testing the two most polluted soils that had different contamination profiles. Earthworms exhibited a more consistent, less variable response than springtails. Overall results showed that avoidance tests with collembolans and earthworms have the potential to be used as screening tools in ecological risk assessment schemes for contaminated land, to trigger other tests in case of concern. However, further method development is needed to reduce variability in the data, particularly in the Collembola assays, and to gain knowledge about the possible effects of soil properties on the outcome of the tests.

Almost all terrestrial and aquatic assays that are accepted as standardized, or that have been proposed, involve the exposure of confined organisms to toxicants. If avoidance (sensu evasion, displacement) of contaminants occurs in real situations, then bioassays involving forced exposure severely underestimate pernicious effects of contamination. Two main objectives were achieved in this study: To verify the occurrence of avoidance of copper by cladocerans; to determine the association between avoidance and other toxicity endpoints (lethality and feeding depression), and therefore, to ascertain if fully acclimated individuals from a reference field population exhibited a genetically determined avoidance markedly different from those belonging to a historically metal‐stressed population. Twelve cloned lineages of the cladoceran Daphnia longispina, collected from two field populations, were selected according to their lethal sensitivity to copper and acclimated to controlled conditions for more than 30 generations. A 1.1‐m test chamber with five compartments was built, allowing the establishment of a dissolved toxicant gradient and the free movement of individuals. In the absence of any toxicant, juveniles from each cloned lineage distributed themselves randomly along the test chamber and furthermore, no significant differences were observed between the two replicates, attesting the repeatability of this novel assay. All lineages showed significant avoidance to copper when exposed to a gradient from 3 to 87 μg/L. The most sensitive lineages to lethal levels of copper began avoiding this metal earlier than resistant ones. An intense association was observed between other endpoints and avoidance; furthermore, avoidance was determined to be much more sensitive than lethality. Therefore, avoidance assays should be recommended as a complementary tool in ecological risk assessments and effluent biomonitoring because such assays can provide cost‐effective and ecologically relevant information.