2022 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Virtual Conference
March 13 - 15, 2022
6/05/2017 | 9:00 AM - 9:15 AM | MESOCOSM EXPERIMENTS: REDUCTIONIST DISTRACTIONS OR MEANINGFUL COMPLEMENTS TO LABORATORY AND FIELD-BASED ASSESSMENTS OF CONTAMINANT EFFECTS? | 305B
MESOCOSM EXPERIMENTS: REDUCTIONIST DISTRACTIONS OR MEANINGFUL COMPLEMENTS TO LABORATORY AND FIELD-BASED ASSESSMENTS OF CONTAMINANT EFFECTS?
Although small-scale experiments (e.g., microcosms and mesocosms) have been employed for several decades to assess effects of contaminants and other stressors on aquatic communities, these approaches have been harshly criticized in the literature. Despite these criticisms, we feel that small-scale experiments represent an important “middle ground” between laboratory toxicity tests and field assessments of contaminant effects. Because mesocosm experiments typically measure responses at larger spatiotemporal scales and across levels of biological organization, results provide greater ecological realism compared to laboratory toxicity tests. The major challenge using field-derived data is to separate effects of the specific stressor of interest from other potentially confounding factors. Mesocosm experiments provide an ecologically realistic alternative to laboratory toxicity tests while controlling for the confounding variables associated with field-based approaches. In addition to providing mechanistic insight into stressor-response relationships across different levels of biological organization, mesocosm experiments can be coupled with field assessments to address important policy issues. In this presentation we will review results of several large scale studies in which mesocosm experiments were integrated with field-based approaches to validate laboratory-derived estimates of contaminant effects.
- S03 Stressing the 'Eco' in Freshwater Ecotoxicology
- C13 Ecotoxicology
- S25 Do mesocosm experiments play a meaningful role in freshwater research
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Presenters/Authors
William Clements
(), Colorado State University, william.clements@colostate.edu;
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Christopher Kotalik
(), Colorado State University, cjkotalik@gmail.com;
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