Towards a unified understanding of species invasions along chemical stress gradients

预测生态系统如何响应环境变化受到其内在复杂性的阻碍-在一个组织规模下运行的过程导致更高层次组织的紧急属性。这一挑战尤为严峻的一个领域是生态风险评估，在这一领域，迫切需要了解化学品如何改变生态群落和生态系统进程。生态毒理学家对化学物质如何影响个体有机体有很多了解。关于它们对更高层次的生物组织的级联效应以及这些过程如何与生态变化的非化学驱动因素（如入侵物种）相互作用，人们知之甚少。这个博士学位的中心目标是解决这一知识差距。

Predicting how ecological systems respond to environmental change is hampered by their inherentcomplexity - processes operating at one scale of organisation lead to emergent properties at higherlevels of organisation. One area where this challenge is particularly acute is ecological riskassessment (ERA), where there is a pressing need to understand how chemicals alter ecologicalcommunities and ecosystem processes. Ecotoxicologists know a great deal about how chemicalsimpact individual organisms. Much less is known about their cascading effects on higher levels ofbiological organisation and how these processes interact with non-chemical drivers of ecologicalchange, such as invasive species. The central goal of this PhD is to address that knowledge gap.