A method of assessing ecological risk to night heron, Nycticorax nycticorax, population persistence from dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane exposure

Abstract

This paper first introduces a probabilistic method for quantitatively evaluating the effects of chemical pollutants in the environment on a wildlife population, which was applied to assess the ecological risk to night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) population persistence from dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDE) exposure in Tai Lake, China. Intrinsic rate of population increase (r) calculated with a population age-structured matrix model was used to measure the adverse effect on population. To perform a probabilistic analysis of risk, lost intrinsic rate of population increase (deltaZ) because of DDE exposure was applied to express the exact extent of risk. The result showed that the risk (i.e., the expectancy of deltaZ of the night heron population exposed to DDE in Tai Lake) was 0.0259, indicating a decrease in gross population size of 2.56% every year compared with that of the previous year without DDE exposure.

Polychlorinated biphenyls and hudson river white perch: implications for population‐level ecological risk assessment and risk management

“…Up until the very recent past, some have argued that population‐level assessment methods, although useful in principle, are still in a developmental phase and have not yet been shown to be reliable (USEPA 2004a). However, as evidenced by a recent workshop and book on population‐level ecological risk assessment (Barnthouse et al 2007) and by a substantial increase in the number of articles on this topic appearing in peer‐reviewed scientific journals (An et al 2006; Clark and Clements 2006; Liess et al 2006; Klok et al 2007), development and application of population‐level assessment methods is now accelerating rapidly.…”

A brief review on models for birds exposed to chemicals

“…Half of the 130 papers focused on granivores (namely, seed-eating birds (Anadón et al, 2011;Fournier et al, 2015;Pollet et al, 1985)). Among wild species, groups of carnivores (i.e., predatory birds, such as raptors (Azmanis et al, 2021;Engelman et al, 2012;Rattner et al, 2020)) and piscivores (i.e., birds foraging for and eating fish or other sea life (An et al, 2006;Goutte et al, 2018;Sánchez et al, 2019)) are similarly represented (between 9 and 14 %) (Figure 3, upper panel). A bit less than one third of the papers investigated drugs, while around 20% of them focused on PPP (Figure 3, lower panel).…”

“…At the population level, several model frameworks have been employed such as individual-based models (Hallam et al, 1996), matrix demographic models (Goutte et al, 2018), or Monte Carlo Markov Chain models (Bennett and Etterson, 2007). Such models describe the effect of a chemical at the population level, either by incorporating critical effect concentrations on the chosen endpoints (e.g., survival, reproduction, behavior) together with an exposure scenario (Etterson and Bennett, 2013), or by directly negatively impacting one or several vital rates, such as survival rate or reproductive success, compared to a scenario without contamination (An et al, 2006).…”

Toxicity Reference Values and Tissue Residue Criteria for Protecting Avian Wildlife Exposed to Methylmercury in China

“…These three species were the night heron ( Nycticorax nycticorax ), little egret ( Egretta garzetta ), and Eurasian spoonbill ( Platalea leucorodia ), all of which consume aquatic prey. These three species are widely distributed in Chinese aquatic ecosystems (Barter et al 2005 ) , and each has been studied extensively as indicators of environmental pollution and wetlands' health (Zamani-Ahmadmahmoodi et al 2010 ;Burger and Gochfeld 1997 ;Zhang et al 2006 ;An et al 2006 ) . The night heron and Eurasian spoonbill are species regarded as second-grade state-protected animals in China.…”