Final Activity Report Summary - INTERACT (Improving EU-risk assessment of toxicants for aquatic communities by considering competition on the population and community level)
The primary aim of ecotoxicology and environmental risk assessment is to predict and interpret effects of toxic contaminants on complex ecological systems such as populations and communities. Nevertheless, the population and community level predictive tools that were used in ecotoxicological risk assessment so far could mainly not realistically predict toxicant effects on the complex systems, since they had not included population and community regulation mechanisms based on competition and other biological interactions.
The overall aim of the INTERACT project was to improve the scientific basis of the risk assessment concerning the parameter competition. To achieve this, investigations of the role of competition were conducted on three levels of ecological complexity:
1. a one-species system of aquatic invertebrates;
2. a two-species system; and
3. a multi-species mesocosm system with a nearly natural aquatic invertebrate community.
The major outputs of the INTERACT project included basic ecotoxicological knowledge about the interaction of toxicants and competition. This knowledge on ecological mechanisms underlying toxic effects at population and community levels could be used in both prospective and retrospective risk assessment. The project results suggested that realistic prediction of toxicant effects on populations required consideration of both lethal and sublethal effects within the context of population and community regulation mechanisms based on intraspecific and interspecific competition. Besides, the results indicated possibility to predict indirect effects of toxicants at the population level using information about effects on individuals life-cycle traits and population regulation mechanisms. The findings also forecasted future research needs in the population and community level ecotoxicology, such as investigation of characteristic population and community level effects of toxicants with different physiological modes of action and research works focused on linkage of (sub)organism and above-organism level effects of toxicants.
The overall aim of the INTERACT project was to improve the scientific basis of the risk assessment concerning the parameter competition. To achieve this, investigations of the role of competition were conducted on three levels of ecological complexity:
1. a one-species system of aquatic invertebrates;
2. a two-species system; and
3. a multi-species mesocosm system with a nearly natural aquatic invertebrate community.
The major outputs of the INTERACT project included basic ecotoxicological knowledge about the interaction of toxicants and competition. This knowledge on ecological mechanisms underlying toxic effects at population and community levels could be used in both prospective and retrospective risk assessment. The project results suggested that realistic prediction of toxicant effects on populations required consideration of both lethal and sublethal effects within the context of population and community regulation mechanisms based on intraspecific and interspecific competition. Besides, the results indicated possibility to predict indirect effects of toxicants at the population level using information about effects on individuals life-cycle traits and population regulation mechanisms. The findings also forecasted future research needs in the population and community level ecotoxicology, such as investigation of characteristic population and community level effects of toxicants with different physiological modes of action and research works focused on linkage of (sub)organism and above-organism level effects of toxicants.