## 5.7.1. Community Ecotoxicology: theory and concepts

Authors: Michiel Kraak and Ivo Roessink

Reviewers: Kees van Gestel, Nico van den Brink, Ralf B. Schäfer

Learning objectives:

You should be able to

- motivate the importance of studying ecotoxicology at the community level.
- define community ecotoxicology and to name specific phenomena at the community and ecosystem level.
- explain the indirect effects observed in community ecotoxicology.
- explain how communities can be studied and how data from experiments at the community level can be analyzed.
- interpret community ecotoxicity data and to explain related challenges.

Keywords: Community ecotoxicology, species interactions, indirect effects, mesocosm, ecosystem processes.

Introduction

The motivation to study ecotoxicological effects at the community level is that generally the targets of environmental protection are populations, communities and ecosystems. Consequently, when scaling up research from the molecular level, via cells, organs and individual organisms towards the population, community or even ecosystem level the ecological and societal relevance of the obtained data strongly increase (Figure 1). Yet, the difficulty of obtaining data increases, due to the increasing complexity, lower reproducibility and the increasing time needed to complete the research, which typically involves higher costs. Moreover, when effects are observed in the field it may be difficult to link these to specific chemicals and to identify the drivers of the observed effects. Not surprisingly, ecotoxicological effects at the community and ecosystem level are understudied.

Figure 1. Characteristics of ecotoxicological research performed at different levels of biological organization.

Community Ecotoxicology: definition and indirect effects

Community ecology is defined as the study of the organization and functioning of communities, which are assemblages of interacting populations of species living within a particular area or habitat. Building on this definition, community ecotoxicology is defined as the study of the effects of toxicants on patterns of species abundance, diversity, community composition and species interactions. These species interactions are unique to the community and ecosystem level and may cause direct effects of toxicants on specific species to exert indirect effects on other species. It has been estimated that the majority of effects at these levels of biological organization are indirect rather than direct. These indirect effects are exerted via:

- predator-prey relationships
- consumer-producer relationships
- competition between species
- parasite-host relationships
- symbiosis
- biotic environment

As an example, Roessink et al. (2006) studied the impact of the fungicide triphenyltin acetate (TPT) on benthic communities in outdoor mesocosms. For several species a dose-related decrease in abundance directly after application was observed, followed by a gradual recovery coinciding with decreasing exposure concentrations, all implying direct effects of the fungicide. For some species, however, opposite results were obtained and abundance increased shortly after application, followed by a gradual decline; see the example of the Culicidae in Figure 2. In this case, these typical indirect effects were explained by a higher sensitivity of the predators and competitors of the Culicidae. Due to diminished predation and competition and higher food availability abundances of the Culicidae temporarily increased after toxicant exposure. With the decreasing exposure concentrations over time, the populations of the predators and competitors recovered, leading to a subsequent decline in numbers of the Culicidae.

Figure 2. Dynamics of Culicidae in cosms treated with the fungicide triphenyltin acetate. Redrawn from Roessink et al. (2006) by Wilma IJzerman.

The indirect effects described above are thus due to species-specific sensitivities to the compound of interest, which influence the interactions between species. Yet, at higher exposure concentrations also the less sensitive species will start to be affected by the chemical. This may lead to an “arch-shaped” relationship between the number of individuals of a certain species and the concentration of a toxicant. In a mesocosm study with the insecticide lambda-cyhalothin this was observed for Daphnia, which are prey for the more sensitive phantom midge Chaoborus (Roessink et al., 2005; Figure 3). At low exposure concentrations the indirect effects, such as release from predation by Chaoborus, led to an increase in abundance of the less sensitive Daphnia. At intermediate exposure concentrations there was a balance between the positive indirect effects and the adverse direct effects of the toxicant. At higher exposure concentrations the adverse direct effects overruled the positive indirect effects resulting in a decline in abundance of the Daphnia. These combined dose dependent direct and indirect effects are inherent to community-level experiments, but are compound and species-interaction specific.

Figure 3. Arch-shaped relationship between the number of individuals of a certain species in a community-level experiment and the concentration of a toxicant, caused by the combination of indirect positive effects at low exposure concentrations and adverse direct effects at higher exposure concentrations.

Investigating communities and analysing and interpreting community ecotoxicity data

To study community ecotoxicology, experiments have to be scaled up and are therefore often performed in mesocosms, artificial ponds, ditches and streams, or even in the field, sometimes accompanied by the use of in- and exclosures. To assess the effects of toxicants on communities in such large systems requires meticulous sampling schemes, which often make use of artificial substrates and e.g. emergence traps for aquatic invertebrates with terrestrial adult life stages (see section on Community ecotoxicology in practice).

Alternatively to scaling up the experiments in community ecotoxicology, the size of the communities may be scaled down. Algae and bacteria grown on coin sized artificial substrates in the field or in experimental settings provide the unique advantage that the experimental unit is actually an entire community.

Given the large scale and complexity of experiments at the community level, such experiments generally generate overwhelming amounts of data, making appropriate analysis of the results challenging. Data analysis focusing on individual responses, so-called univariate analysis, that suffice in single species experiments, obviously falls short in community ecotoxicology, where cosm or (semi-)field communities sometimes consist of over a hundred different species. Hence, multivariate analysis is often more appropriate, similar to the approaches frequently applied in field studies to identify possible drivers of patterns in species abundances. Alternative approaches are also applied, like using ecological indices such as species richness or categorizing the responses of communities into effect classes (Figure 4). To determine if species under semi-field conditions respond equally sensitive to toxicant exposure as in the laboratory, the construction and subsequent comparison of species sensitivity distributions (SSD) (see section on SSDs) may be helpful.

Figure 4. Effect classes to categorize the responses of communities in community-level experiments.

The analysis and interpretation of community ecotoxicity data is also challenged by the dynamic development of each individual replicate cosm, artificial pond, ditch or stream, including those from the control. From the start of the experiment, each control replicate develops independently, matures, and at the end of the experiments that generally last for several months control replicates may differ not only from the treatments, but also among each other. The challenge is then to separate the toxic signal from the natural variability in the data.

In experiments that include a recovery phase, it is frequently observed that previously exposed communities do recover, but develop in another direction than the controls, which actually challenges the definition of recovery. Moreover, recovery can be decelerated or accelerated depending on the dispersal capacity of the species potentially inhabiting the cosms and the distance to nearby populations within a metapopulation (see section on Metapopulations). Other crucial factors that may affect the impact of a toxicant on communities, as well as their recovery from this toxicant exposure include habitat heterogeneity and the state of the community in combination with the moment of exposure. Habitat heterogeneity may affect the distribution of toxicants over the different environmental compartments and may provide shelter to organisms. Communities generally exhibit temporal dynamics in species composition and in their contribution to ecosystem processes (see section on Structure versus function), as well in the lifecycle stages of the individual species. Exponentially growing populations recover much faster than populations that reached carrying capacity and for almost all species, young individuals are up to several orders of magnitude more sensitive than adults or late instar larvae (see section on Population ecotoxicology). Hence, the timing of exposure to toxicants may seriously affect the extent of the adverse effects, as well as the recovery potential of the exposed communities.

From community ecotoxicology towards ecosystems and landscapes

When scaling up from the community to the ecosystem level, again unique characteristics emerge: structural characteristics like biodiversity, but also ecosystem processes, quantified by functional endpoints like primary production, ecosystem respiration, nutrient cycling and decomposition. Although a good environmental quality is based on both ecosystem structure and functioning, there is definitely a bias towards ecosystem structure, both in science and in policy (see section on Structure versus function). Levels of biological organisation higher than ecosystems are covered by the field of landscape ecotoxicology (see section on Landscape ecotoxicology) and in a more practical way by the concept of ecosystem services (see section on Ecosystem services).

References

Roessink, I., Crum, S.J.H., Bransen, F., Van Leeuwen, E., Van Kerkum, F., Koelmans, A.A., Brock, T.C.M. (2006). Impact of triphenyltin acetate in microcosms simulating floodplain lakes. I. Influence of sediment quality. Ecotoxicology 15, 267-293.

Roessink, I., Arts, G.H.P., Belgers, J.D.M., Bransen, F., Maund, S.J., Brock, T.C.M. (2005). Effects of lambda-cyhalothrin in two ditch mesocosm systems of different trophic status. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 24, 1684-1696.

Further reading

Clements, W.H., Newman, M.C. (2002). Community Ecotoxicology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.