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The Role of Behavioral Ecotoxicology in Environmental Protection
Citation:
T. Ford, A., M. Ågerstrand, B. Brooks, Joel Allen, M. Bertram, T. Brodin, Z. Dang, S. Duquesne, R. Sahm, F. Hoffmann, H. Hollert, S. Jacob, N. Klüver, Jim Lazorchak, M. Ledesma, S. Melvin, S. Mohr, S. Padilla, G. Pyle, S. Scholz, M. Saaristo, E. Smit, J. Steevens, S. van den Berg, W. Kloas, B. Wong, M. Ziegler, AND G. Maack. The Role of Behavioral Ecotoxicology in Environmental Protection. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 55(9):5620–5628, (2021). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c06493
Impact/Purpose:
This paper is the result of a workshop that took place recently that discusses the potential for including behavioral endpoints into ecotoxicology criteria and other risk based assessments of chemicals and stressors.
Description:
For decades, we have known that chemicals affect human and wildlife behavior. Moreover, due to recent technological and computational advances, scientists are now increasingly aware that a wide variety of contaminants and other environmental stressors adversely affect organismal behavior and subsequent ecological outcomes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. There is also a groundswell of concern that regulatory ecotoxicology does not adequately consider behavior, primarily due to a lack of standardized toxicity methods. This has, in turn, led to the exclusion of many behavioral ecotoxicology studies from chemical risk assessments. To improve understanding of the challenges and opportunities for behavioral ecotoxicology within regulatory toxicology/risk assessment, a unique workshop with international representatives from the fields of behavioral ecology, ecotoxicology, regulatory (eco)toxicology, neurotoxicology, test standardization, and risk assessment resulted in the formation of consensus perspectives and recommendations, which promise to serve as a roadmap to advance interfaces among the basic and translational sciences, and regulatory practices.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: The Role of Behavioral Ecotoxicology in Environmental Protection
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33851533/