Frequent pesticide-related impacts on ecosystems at concentrations considered environmentally safe indicate that the current risk assessment framework for registration of pesticides is not protective enough. Causes may include difficulties in assessing the effects of sequential pesticide pulses and their interaction with environmental stressors. By contrast to such realistic scenarios, risk assessment for registration of pesticides is typically based on tests of a single exposure period under benign laboratory conditions. Here, we investigated the toxicological sensitivity of Gammarus pulex, an ecologically relevant crustacean, from uncontaminated control streams and pesticide-contaminated agricultural streams by exposing them to pesticide contamination in the laboratory. Individuals from contaminated streams were 2.7-fold more sensitive to pesticide exposure than individuals from the reference streams. We revealed that this increase in sensitivity was the result of a synergistic interaction of sequential pesticide exposure and temperature stress. Such multiple stressor scenarios are typical for agricultural streams. We conclude that the interactive effects of sequential toxicant exposure and additional environmental stressors need to be considered in a realistic risk assessment framework.
Keywords: Agricultural streams; Bioindicator SPEAR; Environmental stressors; Multiple stressors; Risk assessment; Synergistic interaction.
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