Predicting the sensitivity of populations from individual exposure to chemicals: The role of ecological interactions

Gabsi, Faten; Schäffer, Andreas; Preuß, Thomas G.

doi:10.1002/etc.2409

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Many chemicals, such as pesticides, inhibit feeding rates of species (Zubrod et al, 2010;Agatz et al, 2013). Modeling consequences of this inhibition suggest reductions in individual survival and population extinction already at 50% (Baird et al, 2007) and 80% inhibition (Gabsi et al, 2014), which is comparable to our findings of abrupt decline when stress exceeded 70%. As macroinvertebrate detritivores disproportionately contribute to leaf litter processing in many temperate stream ecosystems (Hieber & Gessner, 2002), feeding rate inhibition has been shown to substantially compromise this important stream process (Maltby et al, 2002).…”

Section: Effects Of Exposure To Toxic Chemicalssupporting

confidence: 86%

Impaired ecosystem process despite little effects on populations: modeling combined effects of warming and toxicants

Galić

Grimm

Forbes

2017

Global Change Biology

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Freshwater ecosystems are exposed to many stressors, including toxic chemicals and global warming, which can impair, separately or in combination, important processes in organisms and hence higher levels of organization. Investigating combined effects of warming and toxicants has been a topic of little research, but neglecting their combined effects may seriously misguide management efforts. To explore how toxic chemicals and warming, alone and in combination, propagate across levels of biological organization, including a key ecosystem process, we developed an individual-based model (IBM) of a freshwater amphipod detritivore, Gammarus pseudolimnaeus, feeding on leaf litter. In this IBM, life history emerges from the individuals' energy budgets. We quantified, in different warming scenarios (+1-+4 °C), the effects of hypothetical toxicants on suborganismal processes, including feeding, somatic and maturity maintenance, growth, and reproduction. Warming reduced mean adult body sizes and population abundance and biomass, but only in the warmest scenarios. Leaf litter processing, a key contributor to ecosystem functioning and service delivery in streams, was consistently enhanced by warming, through strengthened interaction between the detritivorous consumer and its resource. Toxicant effects on feeding and maintenance resulted in initially small adverse effects on consumers, but ultimately led to population extinction and loss of ecosystem process. Warming in combination with toxicants had little effect at the individual and population levels, but ecosystem process was impaired in the warmer scenarios. Our results suggest that exposure to the same amount of toxicants can disproportionately compromise ecosystem processing depending on global warming scenarios; for example, reducing organismal feeding rates by 50% will reduce resource processing by 50% in current temperature conditions, but by up to 200% with warming of 4 °C. Our study has implications for assessing and monitoring impacts of chemicals on ecosystems facing global warming. We advise complementing existing monitoring approaches with directly quantifying ecosystem processes and services.

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Section: Effects Of Exposure To Toxic Chemicalssupporting

confidence: 86%

Impaired ecosystem process despite little effects on populations: modeling combined effects of warming and toxicants

Galić

Grimm

Forbes

2017

Global Change Biology

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“…These contradicting results can be explained by how predation was applied in the 2 studies. This highlights the complexity of assessing how ecological interactions alter the response of a population to chemical stress and the need for ecologically realistic tools [36,37]. larvae preferred to prey on smaller individuals, leading to lower abundances of neonates in the predation treatments at the end of the experiment.…”

Section: Reduced Effect Of Pyrene When Combined With Predation and Comentioning

confidence: 99%

Species interactions and chemical stress: Combined effects of intraspecific and interspecific interactions and pyrene on Daphnia magna population dynamics

Viaene

Laender²,

Rico

et al. 2015

Enviro Toxic and Chemistry

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Species interactions are often suggested as an important factor when assessing the effects of chemicals on higher levels of biological organization. Nevertheless, the contribution of intraspecific and interspecific interactions to chemical effects on populations is often overlooked. In the present study, Daphnia magna populations were initiated with different levels of intraspecific competition, interspecific competition, and predation and exposed to pyrene pulses. Generalized linear models were used to test which of these factors significantly explained population size and structure at different time points. Pyrene had a negative effect on total population densities, with effects being more pronounced on smaller D. magna individuals. Among all species interactions tested, predation had the largest negative effect on population densities. Predation and high initial intraspecific competition were shown to interact antagonistically with pyrene exposure. This was attributed to differences in population structure before pyrene exposure and pyrene-induced reductions in predation pressure by Chaoborus sp. larvae. The present study provides empirical evidence that species interactions within and between populations can alter the response of aquatic populations to chemical exposure. Therefore, such interactions are important factors to be considered in ecological risk assessments.

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“…Examples of biological traits influencing toxicant effects at the individual level include respiration type, size, life cycle duration, or degree of sclerotization (Baird and Van den Brink ; Rubach et al ; Rico and Van den Brink ). Examples of biological traits influencing the resilience and the ability of populations and communities to recover include the reproductive characteristics and recolonization ability of the disturbed populations (Gergs et al ; Rico and Van den Brink ), the trophic state of the exposed system (oligotrophic or eutrophic; Alexander et al ; De Hoop et al ; Gabsi et al ), the strength of interspecific and intraspecific species interactions in a food‐web context (e.g., predation, competition; De Laender et al ), and the complexity of this food web (De Laender et al ). In the context of ecological effect modeling, it has been proposed to define an ecological scenario by allocating 1 value to each variable potentially influencing population‐ and ecosystem‐level responses to (a mixture of) chemicals (De Laender et al ).…”

Section: Environmental Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward refined environmental scenarios for ecological risk assessment of down-the-drain chemicals in freshwater environments

Franco

Price

Marshall

et al. 2016

Integr Environ Assess Manag

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Current regulatory practice for chemical risk assessment suffers from the lack of realism in conventional frameworks. Despite significant advances in exposure and ecological effect modeling, the implementation of novel approaches as high-tier options for prospective regulatory risk assessment remains limited, particularly among general chemicals such as down-the-drain ingredients. While reviewing the current state of the art in environmental exposure and ecological effect modeling, we propose a scenario-based framework that enables a better integration of exposure and effect assessments in a tiered approach. Globalto catchment-scale spatially explicit exposure models can be used to identify areas of higher exposure and to generate ecologically relevant exposure information for input into effect models. Numerous examples of mechanistic ecological effect models demonstrate that it is technically feasible to extrapolate from individual-level effects to effects at higher levels of biological organization and from laboratory to environmental conditions. However, the data required to parameterize effect models that can embrace the complexity of ecosystems are large and require a targeted approach. Experimental efforts should, therefore, focus on vulnerable species and/or traits and ecological conditions of relevance. We outline key research needs to address the challenges that currently hinder the practical application of advanced model-based approaches to risk assessment of down-the-drain chemicals. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2017;13:233-248. C 2016 SETAC

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Predicting the sensitivity of populations from individual exposure to chemicals: The role of ecological interactions

Cited by 12 publications

References 39 publications

Impaired ecosystem process despite little effects on populations: modeling combined effects of warming and toxicants

Impaired ecosystem process despite little effects on populations: modeling combined effects of warming and toxicants

Species interactions and chemical stress: Combined effects of intraspecific and interspecific interactions and pyrene on Daphnia magna population dynamics

Toward refined environmental scenarios for ecological risk assessment of down-the-drain chemicals in freshwater environments

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