Bioenergetic food webs as a means of linking toxicological effects across scales of ecological organization

摘要: Although significant progress has been made in ourability to predict population-level consequences oftoxic effects on individuals, extending thispredictive ability communities, functional guilds,and ecosystems will require more integration ofecological theory into environmental science. Bioenergetics and food webs have long centralthemes ecology greatly expanded ourunderstanding of nature. numerousenergetic-based toxicological endpoints beendeveloped, few extended this framework beyond theindividual level. Most energetic includeindividual growth, only occasionally is thisintegrated with population dynamics. However,population-level analyses (e.g., secondaryproduction) integrate individual populationprocesses, provide two key parameters: consumptionand energy flow. Within a web framework,estimates consumption flow throughpopulations facilitate linking population-levelcontaminant ecosystem-level effects. Several examples are given illustrate the utilityof approach.