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      INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CHEMICAL AND CLIMATE STRESSORS: A ROLE FOR MECHANISTIC TOXICOLOGY IN ASSESSING CLIMATE CHANGE RISKS

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          Abstract

          Incorporation of global climate change (GCC) effects into assessments of chemical risk and injury requires integrated examinations of chemical and nonchemical stressors. Environmental variables altered by GCC (temperature, precipitation, salinity, pH) can influence the toxicokinetics of chemical absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion as well as toxicodynamic interactions between chemicals and target molecules. In addition, GCC challenges processes critical for coping with the external environment (water balance, thermoregulation, nutrition, and the immune, endocrine, and neurological systems), leaving organisms sensitive to even slight perturbations by chemicals when pushed to the limits of their physiological tolerance range. In simplest terms, GCC can make organisms more sensitive to chemical stressors, while alternatively, exposure to chemicals can make organisms more sensitive to GCC stressors. One challenge is to identify potential interactions between nonchemical and chemical stressors affecting key physiological processes in an organism. We employed adverse outcome pathways, constructs depicting linkages between mechanism-based molecular initiating events and impacts on individuals or populations, to assess how chemical- and climate-specific variables interact to lead to adverse outcomes. Case examples are presented for prospective scenarios, hypothesizing potential chemical–GCC interactions, and retrospective scenarios, proposing mechanisms for demonstrated chemical–climate interactions in natural populations. Understanding GCC interactions along adverse outcome pathways facilitates extrapolation between species or other levels of organization, development of hypotheses and focal areas for further research, and improved inputs for risk and resource injury assessments. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2013;32:32–48. © 2012 SETAC

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          Most cited references138

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          Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change

          Ecological changes in the phenology and distribution of plants and animals are occurring in all well-studied marine, freshwater, and terrestrial groups. These observed changes are heavily biased in the directions predicted from global warming and have been linked to local or regional climate change through correlations between climate and biological variation, field and laboratory experiments, and physiological research. Range-restricted species, particularly polar and mountaintop species, show severe range contractions and have been the first groups in which entire species have gone extinct due to recent climate change. Tropical coral reefs and amphibians have been most negatively affected. Predator-prey and plant-insect interactions have been disrupted when interacting species have responded differently to warming. Evolutionary adaptations to warmer conditions have occurred in the interiors of species' ranges, and resource use and dispersal have evolved rapidly at expanding range margins. Observed genetic shifts modulate local effects of climate change, but there is little evidence that they will mitigate negative effects at the species level.
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            The impacts of climate change in coastal marine systems.

            Anthropogenically induced global climate change has profound implications for marine ecosystems and the economic and social systems that depend upon them. The relationship between temperature and individual performance is reasonably well understood, and much climate-related research has focused on potential shifts in distribution and abundance driven directly by temperature. However, recent work has revealed that both abiotic changes and biological responses in the ocean will be substantially more complex. For example, changes in ocean chemistry may be more important than changes in temperature for the performance and survival of many organisms. Ocean circulation, which drives larval transport, will also change, with important consequences for population dynamics. Furthermore, climatic impacts on one or a few 'leverage species' may result in sweeping community-level changes. Finally, synergistic effects between climate and other anthropogenic variables, particularly fishing pressure, will likely exacerbate climate-induced changes. Efforts to manage and conserve living marine systems in the face of climate change will require improvements to the existing predictive framework. Key directions for future research include identifying key demographic transitions that influence population dynamics, predicting changes in the community-level impacts of ecologically dominant species, incorporating populations' ability to evolve (adapt), and understanding the scales over which climate will change and living systems will respond.
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              Adverse outcome pathways: a conceptual framework to support ecotoxicology research and risk assessment.

              Ecological risk assessors face increasing demands to assess more chemicals, with greater speed and accuracy, and to do so using fewer resources and experimental animals. New approaches in biological and computational sciences may be able to generate mechanistic information that could help in meeting these challenges. However, to use mechanistic data to support chemical assessments, there is a need for effective translation of this information into endpoints meaningful to ecological risk-effects on survival, development, and reproduction in individual organisms and, by extension, impacts on populations. Here we discuss a framework designed for this purpose, the adverse outcome pathway (AOP). An AOP is a conceptual construct that portrays existing knowledge concerning the linkage between a direct molecular initiating event and an adverse outcome at a biological level of organization relevant to risk assessment. The practical utility of AOPs for ecological risk assessment of chemicals is illustrated using five case examples. The examples demonstrate how the AOP concept can focus toxicity testing in terms of species and endpoint selection, enhance across-chemical extrapolation, and support prediction of mixture effects. The examples also show how AOPs facilitate use of molecular or biochemical endpoints (sometimes referred to as biomarkers) for forecasting chemical impacts on individuals and populations. In the concluding sections of the paper, we discuss how AOPs can help to guide research that supports chemical risk assessments and advocate for the incorporation of this approach into a broader systems biology framework.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Environ Toxicol Chem
                Environ. Toxicol. Chem
                etc
                Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry / Setac
                John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (Hoboken, USA )
                0730-7268
                1552-8618
                January 2013
                18 December 2012
                : 32
                : 1
                : 32-48
                Affiliations
                []U.S. Geological Survey, Columbia Environmental Research Center Columbia, Missouri
                []U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Mid-Continent Ecology Division Duluth, Minnesota
                [§ ]Institute for Integrative Bird Behavior Studies, Department of Biology, The College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
                []Department of Environmental Sciences, University of California Riverside, California, USA
                [# ]Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University Durham, North Carolina, USA
                [†† ]Center for Health and the Environment, University of California at Davis Davis, California, USA
                Author notes
                *To whom correspondence may be addressed ( mhooper@ 123456usgs.gov ).
                Article
                10.1002/etc.2043
                3601417
                23136056
                6f58d2bc-09a3-4728-a5c3-1d926bf7f7d6
                Copyright © 2012 SETAC

                Re-use of this article is permitted in accordance with the Creative Commons Deed, Attribution 2.5, which does not permit commercial exploitation.

                History
                : 11 March 2012
                : 08 May 2012
                : 13 August 2012
                Categories
                Global Climate Change

                Environmental chemistry
                adverse outcome pathway,acclimation,weather
                Environmental chemistry
                adverse outcome pathway, acclimation, weather

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