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Astaxanthine (ASTA) terpene, a red pigment found in algae known as rhodopite, is a tetraterpene. In this study, possible toxic and genotoxic effects of the ASTA were investigated depending on the dose-time interaction. The toxic effect of the ASTA was determined by in vivo longevity test in Oregon-R wild strain of Drosophila melanogaster. For this purpose, adult female and male individuals were chronically fed on media containing different doses of the ASTA (25, 50, 100 and 200 ppm). While the average life span in the control group is 49.07±1.92 days in females, it is 51.01±2.12 days in males. These values are 32.06±1.50 and 27.06±1.18 days in females in the lowest and highest ASTA application groups (25-200 ppm), 32.45±1.48 and 23.52±0.92 in males, respectively. When the results of the control and application groups of the ASTA terpene were compared, it was observed that the average life span decreased in both female and male populations depending on the dose-time interaction (p<0.05). The genotoxic effect of the ASTA terpene was also determined by the somatic mutation and recombination test (SMART) in D.melanogaster. According to the data obtained from the SMART result, an increase in clone induction frequency was observed in all the ASTA application groups (50, 100, 200 and 400 ppm) due to concentration increase. These results show that ASTA stimulates somatic mutations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]