Are standard aquatic test species and methods adequate surrogates for use in environmental risk assessment of pesticides in tropical environments?

In regulatory risk assessment, surrogate species of fish, aquatic invertebrates and primary producers are tested to assess toxicity and subsequently the risk of pesticides to freshwater environments. This study evaluates whether the standard, surrogate test species, used in many parts of the world, are suitable surrogates for use in risk assessments for tropical freshwater environments. Data for the toxicity of pesticides to tropical fish, invertebrate and primary producer species were extracted from the supplemental material by Wang et al. (2019), the USEPA ECOTOX database and peer reviewed literature.