Simulating regimes of chemical disturbance and testing impacts in the ecosystem using a novel programmable dosing system

Pollution is a global issue at the frontier between ecology, environmental science, management, engineering and policy. Legislation requires experiments to determine how much contamination an ecosystem can absorb before there are structural or functional changes. Yet, existing methods cannot realistically simulate regimes of chemical disturbance and determine impacts to assemblages in ecosystems. This is because they lack ecologically relevant species and biotic interactions, are logistically difficult to set-up, and lack environmentally relevant regimes of chemical and abiotic disturbance that organisms experience in polluted areas. We solved these long-standing environmental, logistical, experimental and ecological problems by developing a programmable dosing-system. This dosing-system simulates, in situ, regimes of chemical disturbance to assemblages by manipulating the concentration, duration, timing and frequency of pollutants to which they are exposed. Experiments with priority po...