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Article
The Community Conditioning Hypothesis and its Application to Environmental Toxicology
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
(1996)
Abstract
In this paper we present the community conditioning hypothesis, “ecological communities retain information about events in their history.” This hypothesis, which was derived from the concept of nonequilibrium community ecology, was developed as a framework for understanding the persistence of dose-related responses in multispecies toxicity tests. We present data from three standardized aquatic microcosm (SAM) toxicity tests using the water-soluble fractions from turbine fuels (Jet-A, JP- 4, and JP-8). In all three tests, the toxicants depressed the Daphnia populations for several weeks, which resulted in algal blooms in the dosed microcosms due to lower predation rates. These effects were short-lived, and by the second and third months of the experiments, the Daphnia populations appeared to have recovered. However, multivariate analysis of the data revealed dose/response differences that reappeared during the later part of the tests, often due to differences in other consumers (rotifers, ostracods, ciliates), or algae that are not normally consumed (filamentous green algae and bluegreen algae”). Our findings are consistent with ecological theories that describe communities as the unique product of their etiologies. The implications of this to environmental toxicology are that almost all environmental events leave lasting effects, whether or not we have observed them.
Keywords
- Community conditioning,
- Jet fuels,
- Microcosms,
- Ecotoxicology
Disciplines
Publication Date
April, 1996
Publisher Statement
Ecotoxicology & Pollution Science > Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry > Vol 15 Issue 4 JOURNAL TOOLS Get New Content Alerts Get RSS feed Save to My Profile Get Sample Copy Recommend to Your Librarian JOURNAL MENU Journal Home FIND ISSUES Current Issue All Issues Virtual Issues FIND ARTICLES Early View Accepted Articles Most Accessed GET ACCESS Subscribe / Renew FOR CONTRIBUTORS OnlineOpen Author Guidelines Submit an Article ABOUT THIS JOURNAL News Overview Editorial Board Permissions Advertise Contact SPECIAL FEATURES ET&C Cover Gallery SETAC Journals SETAC Members Login Wiley Job Network 2012 Volume Is Now Free SETAC Long Beach iPad Raffle Jobs Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Copyright © 2014 SETAC Article first published online: 26 OCT 2009 in Wiley Online Library DOI: 10.1002/etc.5620150427
Citation Information
Robin A. Matthews, Wayne G Landis and Geoffrey B. Matthews. "The Community Conditioning Hypothesis and its Application to Environmental Toxicology" Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Vol. 15 Iss. 4 (1996) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/robin_matthews/7/