LONG TERM GOALS

The research involves the development of mathematical models suitable for relating the effects of xenobiotic substances on individuals and populations of benthic marine organisms. This goal recognizes that the ecological effects of contaminants occur within complex ecological communities, but that the response of the constituent populations to environmental stress is difficult and/or very expensive to measure. Thus it is important to extract as much insight as possible from the large body of experimental information quantifying the impact of toxicants on the individual organisms within impacted, or potentially impacted populations. OBJECTIVES The research has two main parts: (i) modeling the consequences for individuals of toxicant-induced changes in the rates of energy acquisition and utilization by individual organisms, and (ii) using individual-based population models to predict the implications of these changes on the abundance and spatial distribution of organisms. APPROACH Our research makes use of two types of models. In modeling the response of individuals to toxicants, we use dynamic energy budget (DEB) models to describe the rules by which individua