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State-of-Science Approaches to Determine Sensitive Taxa for Water Quality Criteria Derivation
Citation:
Willming, M., C. LaLone, Sandy Raimondo, AND M. Barron. State-of-Science Approaches to Determine Sensitive Taxa for Water Quality Criteria Derivation. SETAC North America 37th Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL, November 06 - 10, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
This abstract provides an overview of how two EPA tools, Web-ICE and SeaAPASS, could be used to advance water quality criteria for aquatic life. This work is important because of the potential for these tools to be incorporated into Agency regulatory guidance.
Description:
Current Ambient Water Quality Criteria (AWQC) guidelines specify pre-defined taxa diversity requirements, which has limited chemical-specific criteria development in the U.S. to less than 100 chemicals. A priori knowledge of sensitive taxa to toxicologically similar groups of chemicals should facilitate more rapid development of AWQC by focusing data collection on the most sensitive aquatic species or taxonomic groups. Two tools available for determining the sensitivity of taxa include Web-based Interspecies Correlation Estimation (Web-ICE; www3.epa.gov/webice/) and Sequence Alignment to Predict Across Species Susceptibility (SeqAPASS; seqapass.epa.gov/seqapass/). Web-ICE estimates acute toxicity to aquatic organisms with limited or no test data based on log-linear regression models of the sensitivity of a surrogate and predicted taxon. Web-ICE generated species sensitivity distributions can then identify sensitive taxa and estimate toxicity values. SeqAPASS determines species similarity in aligned amino acid sequences of specific molecular targets, including functional domains such as the ligand-binding domain of a biomolecule responsible for the toxic action of a chemical. Susceptible taxa are identified based on sequence similarity to a known sensitive query species. Linking these two tools would also allow for determining insensitive taxa or groups of general similarity, so that data collection efforts could be optimized towards those species that would drive criteria derivation. Application of state-of-the-science tools such as SeqAPASS and Web-ICE, along with grouping toxicologically similar chemicals by mode of action or molecular initiating event, should facilitate development of the next generation of AWQC.