An integrated approach to aquatic ecosystem health: top-down, bottom-up or middle-out?

Due to the ecological complexity of many stressed ecosystems, large field studies have the disadvantage of having to deal with diverse sets of stressors involving both chemical impacts and habitat changes. Toxicologically-oriented studies have traditionally been mechanistically focused, attempting to develop an understanding of the interactions between chemical availability and physiological responses of aquatic organisms. This has led to the …