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...污染是横跨生态学、环境科学、管理学、工程学与政策学领域的全球性前沿议题。立法要求通过实验确定生态系统在出现结构或功能改变前所能承受的最大污染阈值。然而现有方法无法真实模拟化学干扰模式，也难以评估其对生态生物群落组合的影响——究其原因，现有实验体系缺乏具备生态相关性的物种与生物相互作用，实施后勤难度较高，且未涵盖污染区域中生物所实际经历的、与环境条件相符的化学与非生物干扰模式。我们通过开发可编程投加系统（programmable dosing-system）解决了这些长期存在的环境、后勤、实验与生态学难题。该系统可通过调控污染物的暴露浓度、持续时长、施加时机与频率，在原位（in situ）模拟生物群落组合所承受的化学干扰模式。针对优先污染物的实验……