Tag Archives: Schulz

Plants and invertebrates face increasing applied pesticide toxicity

Increased efficacy of pesticides comes along with decreased applied amounts in agriculture – but does this translate to lower risks to non-target species? The answer is NO, if you ask scientists at the University of Koblenz-Landau who recently published a study in Science assessing changes in the use of 381 pesticides and toxicity to eight non-target species groups over the course of 25 years. In our blog, the authors explain the shifts in applied pesticide toxicity they found, and which species are increasingly at risk.

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Impact of fungicides on amphibian development & metamorphosis

In this post, Mirco Bundschuh and Carsten Brühl talk about a recent publication assessing the impact of fungicide-induced changes in food quality on the development and metamorphoses of the European common frog (Rana temopraria). This work is published open access in Ecology and Evolution. Relevant data is made available to the research community through dryad.

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Chemicals cross boundaries: New book highlights the water-land interface

In this post, Mirco Bundschuh and Ralf Schulz talk about a new book on contaminants and ecological interfaces, edited by Johanna M Kraus, David M Walters (both USGS) and Marc. A Mills (US EPA).

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Celebrating 5 Years of the EcotoxBlog: A Platform for Sharing Research and Experiences in Ecotoxicology

Blogs are effective outlets for science communication. We launched the EcotoxBlog in 2015 to foster communication among researchers, to share ecotoxicology news, and to create an opportunity for students to blog about their experiences. Five years later we have reached several milestones – a reason to celebrate!

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Modeling Environmental Threshold Levels

In this post, Lara Petschick talks about the recent publication “Modeling Regulatory Threshold Levels for Pesticides in Surface Waters from Effect Databases”, which explains how existing ecotoxicological effect databases can be used to generate high-quality effect thresholds for large-scale environmental risk assessments.

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What’s driving insecticide pollution in agricultural surface waters?

In this post, Jakob Wolfram talks about his most recent paper “Insecticide Risks in United States Surface Waters: Drivers and Spatiotemporal Modeling”. This publication analyzed the drivers of insecticide nonpoint source pollution and used a modelling approach to identify regions in the U.S. where surface waters may be at risk.

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Can we use an American leaf shredder to assess sediment-associated metal risks in Europe?

In this post, Jochen Zubrod reports on their recently published paper “Is Hyalella azteca a suitable model leaf-shredding benthic crustacean for testing the toxicity of sediment-associated metals in Europe?”.

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“Don’t forget me”: aquatic insects, a disregarded taxonomic class in the assessment of fungicide toxicity in detritivorous invertebrates

In this post, Marco Konschak writes about their recently published paper “Waterborne and diet-related effects of inorganic and organic fungicides on the insect leaf shredder Chaetopteryx villosa (Trichoptera)”.

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