Fungicides are indispensable to global food security and their use is forecasted to intensify. Fungicides can reach aquatic ecosystems and occur in surface water bodies in agricultural catchments throughout the entire growing season due to their frequent, prophylactic application. However, in comparison to herbicides and insecticides, the exposure to and effects of fungicides have received less attention. We provide an overview of the risk of fungicides to aquatic ecosystems covering fungicide exposure (i.e., environmental fate, exposure modeling, and mitigation measures) as well as direct and indirect effects of fungicides on microorganisms, macrophytes, invertebrates, and vertebrates. We show that fungicides occur widely in aquatic systems, that the accuracy of predicted environmental concentrations is debatable, and that fungicide exposure can be effectively mitigated. We additionally demonstrate that fungicides can be highly toxic to a broad range of organisms and can pose a risk to aquatic biota. Finally, we outline central research gaps that currently challenge our ability to predict fungicide exposure and effects, promising research avenues, and shortcomings of the current environmental risk assessment for fungicides.

Fungicides: An overlooked pesticide class?

Toxicants have both sub-lethal and lethal effects on aquatic biota, influencing organism fitness and community composition. However, toxicant effects within ecosystems may be altered by interaction...

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2018.0020

Biological interactions mediate context and species-specific sensitivities to salinity

Thiacloprid affects trophic interaction between gammarids and mayflies

http://pure.au.dk/portal/files/55259017/Rasmussen_et_al._2013b_Aquat_Toxicol.pdf

Pesticide impacts on predator-prey interactions across two levels of organisation.

One of the objectives of the European Union (EU) ecological risk assessment of chemicals (ERA) is to derive maximum environmental concentrations that are not expected to cause adverse ecological effects. To this end, related EU directives list protection goals as well as guidelines that should be used to reach these goals. It is generally accepted that the individual-level endpoints on which these guidelines are based do not correspond to the listed population- and ecosystem-level protection goals. In this article, we identify 5 research topics that are key to bridging this gap: 1) the refinement of population-level effects and recovery rates by explicitly taking into account competition and 2) predation, 3) the assessment of chemical effects on biodiversity, 4) the assessment of chemical stress on ecosystem functions and services, and 5) the quantification of the effects of chemical mixtures. In addition, we illustrate why an ecosystem perspective is needed to address these topics and to inform the risk assessment process. We propose the use of existing ecotoxicological community, food web, and ecosystem models to tackle these issues and discuss why new models are needed to predict chemical effects on biodiversity.

Brief communication: The ecosystem perspective in ecotoxicology as a way forward for the ecological risk assessment of chemicals

Invertebrate communities of lentic habitats comprise, amongst others, the crustacean Asellus aquaticus (Isopoda) and the turbellarian Dendrocoelum lacteum (Tricladida). Because D. lacteum preferentially preys on A. aquaticus, contaminants introduced into the aquatic environment may affect this predator–prey interaction, finally influencing the performance of the predator. However, no studies investigating implications of organic pollutants on this food web subsystem currently exist. Hence, the present study assessed short-term implications of pesticides with different modes of action, namely, the triazole fungicide tebuconazole and the pyrethroid insecticide lambda-cyhalothrin, during a 72 h trial. The experiments for tebuconazole showed a statistically significant decrease in predatory success of D. lacteum. Lambda-cyhalothrin, in contrast, increased predation success by 40%, which is, however, not statistically significant. Both the decrease and the increase in predation seemed to be primarily driven by an altered activity of the prey A. aquaticus. This may be hypothesized because any shift in the prey’s activity influenced its probability to stick to mucus, a viscous substance released by D. lacteum, or to encounter the predator directly.

Combined Effect of Invertebrate Predation and Sublethal Pesticide Exposure on the Behavior and Survival of Asellus aquaticus (Crustacea; Isopoda)

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Andreas Appeltauer

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Combined Effect of Invertebrate Predation and Sublethal Pesticide Exposure on the Behavior and Survival of Asellus aquaticus (Crustacea; Isopoda)