The laboratory of Environmental Toxicology and Aquatic Ecology, Environmental Toxicology Unit - GhEnToxLab (Ghent University) is looking for a full time Scientific Researcher.
PhD research project: Development of in vitro assays to improve marine risk assessment
Friday, the 29th of June, we celebrated Gisele Bockstael. For 35 years now she has been supporting our research, our experiments, our Daphnia, copepod and algae cultures and so much more ... Congratulations, Gisèle!
Toxicity of nickel to aquatic organisms is known to be affected by factors such as dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration and water hardness. Bioavailability models have been developed more than a decade ago that have been validated for European surface waters. Australian surface waters, however, are quite different in composition. This collaborative research with Australian, UK, and USA researchers resulted in slightly modified bioavailability models for a range of indigenous organisms that are shown to predict nickel toxicity in local waters relatively accurately. These models can be used in Australian water quality guideline derivations.
Environmental risk assessment of chemicals is mostly based on ecotoxicity studies under standard and not always realistic conditions of temperature and nutrient levels. In this collaborative study with universities of Wageningen, Leuven, and Namur, we performed an aquatic model ecosystem experiment, which showed that temperature and phosphorus loading to freshwater systems can modify the effects of chemical pollution on the structure (e.g. species composition) and functioning of aquatic ecosystems. We argue that factors like temperature and nutrient levels should be taken into account when evaluating the risks of chemicals in the environment.
Understanding how biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning is essential for assessing the consequences of ongoing biodiversity changes. An increasing number of studies, however, show that environmental conditions affect the shape of BEF relationships. Here, we first use a game‐theoretic community model to reveal that a unimodal response of the BEF slope can be expected along environmental stress gradients, but also how the ecological mechanisms underlying this response may vary depending on how stress affects species interactions.
Our freshwater ecosystems are severely threatened by many factors including pollution and climate change. In the current synthesis, we focus on the potential role of epigenetics (molecular modifications of DNA that do not change the DNA sequence). We highlight examples of the roles of DNA methylation and histone modifications, well-known epigenetic mechanisms, in the response to climate change. We conclude by pinpointing the most promising avenues for future research directions to improve our understanding on how freshwater organisms cope with climate change. With this synthesis, we provide a thorough summary of the field and put forward key research questions that need to be addressed.