Zoology Commons^™

How Risky Is Risk Assessment: The Role That Life History Strategies Play In Susceptibility Of Species To Stress, John D. Stark, John Banks, Roger Vargas

John Banks

Measurements of toxicity based on individuals, such as the LC50 (concentration that kills 50% of a population), and effects on reproduction are used extensively in determining ecological risk, in particular, for endangered or threatened species. An underlying assumption is that individual-based toxicity metrics for one species can be directly compared with that for another species. However, this assumption overlooks the fact that different species have different life-history strategies and variables, such as lifespan, time to first reproduction, and number of offspring produced over a lifetime. Using a simple model and laboratory-derived parameter values, we tested the impact of differences in …