Ecological implications of complex mixtures of contaminants in aquatic habitats

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In the Anthropocene, human activities are challenging aquatic ecosystems with a combination of stressors that have no natural analogue (e.g., synthetic chemicals, rapid climate change). Such stressors have the potential to fundamentally alter biotic systems at all levels of organization, including individuals, populations, and communities. In my research, I conduct natural and manipulative experiments to understand the organismal and ecological effects that anthropogenic stressors can have on natural systems. Understanding and predicting the impacts of these stressors is a key outstanding challenge in modern ecology. I use tools from ecology, ecotoxicology, conservation science, physiology, molecular biology and environmental chemistry to investigate the effects of a complex mixture of anthropogenic stressors in aquatic habitats. Specifically, my research focuses on microplastics as a novel model system for studying the synergistic biological impacts of multiple stressors. Microplastics can act as physical stressors, due to physical impacts of the particles themselves, and chemical stressors, due to both innate chemicals added during manufacturing as well as chemicals that accumulate on these particles from surrounding water. My research contributions have established basic knowledge about fate, exposure and organismal impacts of microplastics and have identified gaps in our ecological understanding of these contaminants, demonstrating that there is little knowledge of how microplastics affect populations, communities, and ecosystems. With NSERC funding, my research program will continue to use microplastics as a model system to answer fundamental questions regarding processes that contribute to how microplastics, alone and in combination with stressors related to climate change, alter ecosystems locally and globally. Microplastics have become a contaminant of concern globally and in Canada, where they are particularly abundant across the Laurentian Great Lakes. My laboratory will contribute vital information about the consequences of microplastics and their associated chemical contaminants for ecosystems, both under present conditions as well as under altered thermal and chemical environments that reflect projected future climate scenarios. My research program will use laboratory and field studies to measure how microplastics impact individual animals, populations, and communitiesinformation that is critical to fill existing knowledge gaps and to inform management decisions. To ensure that research from my lab is accessible to practitioners, I am mentoring and training a diverse group of students and postdocs to be effective communicators and leaders. These skills not only prepare students for a diversity of jobs (e.g., government, NGO, academic), but also increase the visibility and accessibility of our science.