Incorporating Animal Social Context in Ecotoxicology: Can a Single Individual Tell the Collective Story?

摘要

Chemical pollution is an insidious and growing threat to ecosystems globally, Over five thousand different chemicals are regularly detected in the environment, and less than half have undergone any safety or toxicity assessment. The overarching goal of ecotoxicology is to detect and predict the impacts of these contaminants on the natural world. To do this, researchers often employ experiments that simplify and compartmentalize the natural world. Data from these experiments are then used to identify adverse outcomes, with the aim to extrapolate laboratory findings to a real-world setting. Inherently, this process contains assumptions and generates uncertainties. One widespread assumption is that the impact(s) of a contaminant on an organism in a social void-that is, exposed, tested, or housed in isolation-is predictive of the impacts seen in a social environment. For us, this is a surprising assumption because elements of an organism's social environment are likely to mediate the impacts of contaminants and could do so at multiple levels of biological organization (or the adverse outcome pathway; Figure 1). Moreover, through relatively minor changes in common methodologies, this assumption can be mitigated or sidestepped altogether. In this viewpoint, we will illustrate (1) why the social environment is important in the context of ecotoxicology, (2) how it might mediate chemical impacts at multiple points along an adverse outcome pathway, and (3) barriers to incorporating a social context in ecotoxicology and we recommend solutions.