From organisms to populations: modeling aquatic toxicity data across two levels of biological organization

A critical step in estimating the ecological effects of a toxicant is extrapolating organism-level response data across higher levels of biological organization. In the present study, the organism-to-population link is made for the mysid, Americamysis bahia, exposed to a range of concentrations of six toxicants. Organism-level responses observed were categorized as no effect, delayed reproduction, reduced overall reproduction, or both reduced overall reproduction and survival. Population multiplication rates of each toxicant concentration were obtained from matrix models developed from organism-level endpoints and placed into the four categories of organism-level responses. Rates within each category were compared with growth rates modeled for control populations. Population multiplication rates were significantly less than control growth rates only for concentrations at which overall reproduction and both reproduction and survival were significantly less than the control values on the organism level. Decomposition analysis of the significant population-level effects identified reduced reproduction as the primary contributor to a reduced population multiplication rate at all sublethal concentrations and most lethal concentrations. Mortality was the primary contributor to reduced population growth rate only when survival was less than 25% of control survival. These results suggest the importance of altered reproduction in population-level risk assessment and emphasizes the need for complete life-cycle test data to make an explicit link between the organism and population levels.