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Individuals versus organisms versus populations in the definition of ecological assessment endpoints
Author(s) -
Suter Glenn W.,
Norton Susan B.,
Fairbrother Anne
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
integrated environmental assessment and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.665
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1551-3793
pISSN - 1551-3777
DOI - 10.1002/ieam.5630010409
Subject(s) - organism , population , agency (philosophy) , environmental resource management , risk assessment , ecological assessment , ecology , abundance (ecology) , environmental planning , business , geography , biology , environmental health , environmental science , computer science , medicine , paleontology , philosophy , computer security , epistemology
Discussions and applications of the policies and practices of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in ecological risk assessment will benefit from continued clarification of the concepts of assessment endpoints and of levels of biological organization. First, assessment endpoint entities and attributes can be defined at different levels of organization. Hence, an organism‐level attribute, such as growth or survival, can be applied collectively to a population‐level entity such as the brook trout in a stream. Second, assessment endpoints for ecological risk assessment are often mistakenly described as “individual level,” which leads to the idea that such assessments are intended to protect individuals. Finally, populations play a more important role in risk assessments than is generally recognized. Organism‐level attributes are used primarily for population‐level assessments. In addition, the USEPA and other agencies already are basing management decisions on population or community entities and attributes such as production of fisheries, abundance of migratory bird populations, and aquatic community composition.