Modelling of the life cycle of Chironomus species using an energy-based model

Little is known about the differences between the species of the genus Chironomus relatively to their life cycle strategies. This knowledge is however crucial to fully understand the response of the Chironomus community to field perturbations. Here, we proposed to study four Chironomus species by using an energy-based model to describe growth, emergence and reproduction. We used data from the literature for two species (Chironomus plumosus and Chironomus tentans) and data from our experiments for two other species (Chironomus prasinus and Chironomus riparius). We showed that our model is able to accurately describe the life-history attributes for all the species tested, which suggests that Chironomus species have the same fundamental characteristics (low maintenance energetic costs, isomorphism), which makes possible the building of a common modelling framework to assess effects of toxicants at individual and population level. The species showed a few differences relatively to the parameters of the models with possible consequences when assessing effects of chemicals on Chironomus community. For instance, due to differences in growth parameters, C. riparius population dynamics should be more sensitive to effects on individual growth than C. prasinus or C. plumosus ones.