Title

The community conditioning hypothesis and its application to environmental toxicology

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1996

Keywords

community conditioning, jet fuels, microcosms, ecotoxicology

Abstract

In this paper we present the community conditioning hypothesis, “ecological communities retain information about events in their history.” This hypothesis, which was derived from the concept of nonequilibrium community ecology, was developed as a framework for understanding the persistence of dose-related responses in multispecies toxicity tests. We present data from three standardized aquatic microcosm (SAM) toxicity tests using the water-soluble fractions from turbine fuels (Jet-A, JP- 4, and JP-8). In all three tests, the toxicants depressed the Daphnia populations for several weeks, which resulted in algal blooms in the dosed microcosms due to lower predation rates. These effects were short-lived, and by the second and third months of the experiments, the Daphnia populations appeared to have recovered. However, multivariate analysis of the data revealed dose/response differences that reappeared during the later part of the tests, often due to differences in other consumers (rotifers, ostracods, ciliates), or algae that are not normally consumed (filamentous green algae and bluegreen “algae”). Our findings are consistent with ecological theories that describe communities as the unique product of their etiologies. The implications of this to environmental toxicology are that almost all environmental events leave lasting effects, whether or not we have observed them.

Publication Title

Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry

Volume

15

Issue

4

First Page

597

Last Page

603

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1002/etc.5620150427

Type

Text

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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