Towards a unified understanding of species invasions along chemical stress gradients

预测生态系统如何对环境变化做出反应受到其固有复杂性的阻碍--在一个组织规模上运行的过程导致更高组织级别的新兴属性。这一挑战特别严峻的一个领域是生态风险评估，迫切需要了解化学品如何改变生态群落和生态系统进程。生态毒物学家对化学如何简化个体有机体有很深的了解。关于它们对更高水平的生物组织的级联影响，以及这些过程如何与生态变化的非化学驱动因素相互作用，如入侵物种，人们知道的要少得多。该博士学位的中心目标是解决这一知识鸿沟。

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.