A Novel Framework for Predicting Emerging Chemical Stressor Impacts in Complex Ecosystems

淡水生态系统提供支撑人类社会和福祉的关键生态系统服务：包括水净化、碳捕获和维持可持续渔业。然而，无论是在英国还是在世界范围内，这些生态系统都面临着越来越多的威胁，特别是来自一系列新的和正在出现的化学应激源(如新型抗生素和杀虫剂)。淡水生物科学和应用生态学在应对这些新威胁方面装备不足：缺乏证据基础，往往很少或根本没有机械性的理解或预测能力来预测这些新的化学品将如何在现实世界中运行。对于气候和其他环境变化正在重塑和构建的未来生态系统来说，情况尤其如此。我们的项目将通过采取一种与主导了数十年的经典生物监测和生态毒理学工具截然不同的方法来解决所有这些缺点。我们的目标是揭示新出现的化学应激源通过并改变相互作用的物种网络的一般规则-从食物链底部的微生物，到鱼类群落顶部的顶端捕食者。这将涉及制定指标，既包括在化学品首次进入生物系统(通常作为微生物的新食物来源)时的直接污染，也包括在其影响通过食物网传播时的间接影响。例如，我们将能够回答这样的问题：如果一种新的杀虫剂消灭了食物链中央的无脊椎动物，这是否会引发滋扰藻类的大量繁殖，因为它们不再受到控制？为了实现这一目标，我们将在生态系统层面开发一套新的方法，将实验室和野外实验结合起来，以检测我们目前尚不了解的因果机制。这些实验将与数学模型相结合，以预测生态系统层面的影响。我们将同时研究可能面临新的化学应激源的迫在眉睫的威胁的当代生态系统，以及在不同的土地利用和气候变化情况下将出现的未来生态系统。这将为化学应激源监测提供一个全新的范式，基于第一原理来推导出一种新的方法来预测通常由于我们当前的简单方法在处理自然系统的真实生物复杂性时的不足而产生的“生态惊喜”。我们的范围是将我们的方法作为管理的诊断工具，例如，支持选择能够减少生态影响的缓解方案。这种范式的转变将使对未来淡水的预测更加可靠，从而做出更明智的管理决策。这项工作将把纯生态科学和应用生态科学领域结合在一起，使这两套学科互惠互利。我们的提议代表着沿着这条道路迈出的第一步，走向更多学科的视角，这对于应对未来对我们生态系统的威胁至关重要--从淡水中新出现的化学压力源到地平线上隐约可见的越来越多的其他环境威胁。由于该方法是通用的，它不仅将为下一代淡水生态评估铺平道路，而且还可以适应海洋和陆地生态系统的应用。

Freshwater ecosystems provide critical ecosystem services that underpin human societies and wellbeing: including water purification, carbon capture, and the maintenance of sustainable fisheries. However, these ecosystems are under an increasing array of threats, both in the UK and worldwide, especially from a wide range of new and emerging chemical stressors (e.g. novel antibiotics and pesticides). Freshwater biosciences and applied ecology are under-equipped for dealing with these new threats: the evidence base is lacking, there is often little or no mechanistic understanding, or predictive capacity for anticipating how these novel chemicals will operate in the real world. This is particularly true for the ecosystems of the future that are being reshaped and constructed by climate and other environmental changes. Our project will address all these shortcomings by taken a radically different approach from the classical biomonitoring and ecotoxicology tools that have dominated for many decades. We aim to unearth the general rules by which emerging chemical stressors operate through, and alter, networks of interacting species - from microbes at the base of the food web, through to apex predators in the fish community at the top. This will involve the development of indicators of both proximate pollution, as the chemical first enters the biological system (commonly as a new food source for microbes), and also of its indirect effects as its impact propagates through the food web. For instance, we will be able to answer questions such as: if a new insecticide wipes out the invertebrates in the middle of the food web, does this trigger blooms of nuisance algae as they are no longer kept in check? To achieve this, we will develop a new suite of methods at the ecosystem level that combine lab and field experiments to detect the causal mechanisms that we currently do not understand. The experiments will be combined with mathematical modelling to predict ecosystem-level impacts. We will address both, contemporary ecosystems that could be under imminent threat from new chemical stressors, and ecosystems of the future that will emerge under different scenarios of land-use and climate change.This will provide a completely new paradigm in chemical stressor monitoring, based on using first principles to derive a novel means of predicting "ecological surprises" that commonly arise due to the inadequacies of our current simplistic approaches when dealing with the true biocomplexity of natural systems. Our scope is for our approach to serve as a diagnostic tool for management, with research findings, for example, supporting the selection of mitigation options that deliver reduction of ecological effects. This paradigm shift will allow far more robust predictions and therefore more informed management decisions about the freshwaters of the future.The work will bring together the field of pure and applied ecological science, to the mutual benefit of both sets of disciplines. Our proposal represents the first steps along this path to the more multidisciplinary perspective that is going to be critical for dealing with future threats to our ecosystems - from emerging chemical stressors in freshwaters to the growing list of other environmental threats looming on the horizon. Because the approach is general, it will not only pave the way for the next generation of ecological assessment in freshwaters, but it can also be adapted for applications in marine and terrestrial ecosystems.