Aquatic ecotoxicology: from the ecosystem to the cellular and molecular levels

This review of aquatic ecotoxicology is presented in three parts. First, we discuss the fundamental concepts and stress the importance of its ecological basis and the complexity and diversity of the field of investigation, which result from actions and interactions between the physicochemical characteristics of the biotopes, the structural and functional properties of the living organisms, and the contamination modalities. Ecotoxicological mechanisms, regardless of the level of biological complexity, primarily depend on the bioavailability of the toxic products. Numerous processes control the chemical fate of contaminants in the water column and/or sediment compartments; accessibility to the biological barriers that separate the organisms from their surrounding medium depends directly on bioavailability. Second, we review the principal methodologies of the field, from in situ studies at the ecosystem/ecocomplex level to bioassays or single species tests. Third, we focus on mercury, selected as a reference contaminant, in order to illustrate the main ecotoxicological concepts, the complementarity between field and laboratory studies, and the indispensable multidisciplinarity of the approaches.