This website is about ecotoxicology, in particular the development of ecotoxicological models. I find conceptual, mathematical and simulation models important and exciting, because they capture the general principles or the core knowledge of a scientific field and because they can make predictions.

There are also special pages dedicated to three topics:

• Toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic models
• Bioaccumulation and biotransformation
  
• Applications in risk assessment of chemicals. 

Thank you for visiting,

Roman Ashauer

This new paper just came online: "Toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic modelling of survival of Gammarus pulex in multiple pulse exposures to propiconazole: model assumptions, calibration data requirements and predictive power". It is a very nice overview of what is possible to do with the GUTS model (General Unified Threshold model of Survival) - with some interesting results!

The new version of the r-package for GUTS is available from r-forge (not CRAN anymore). More updates will follow soon...

How complex should a useful model for chemical stress be? Recently Tjalling Jager has published a beta version of his e-book “Making sense of chemical stress”, adressing this fundamental question.  The book is an easy to understand introduction, because it does not use any equations, but still reveals really important insights to the reader.

This summer is filling up quickly with several exciting conferences. First is of course the SETAC world conference in Berlin in May. In June Roman Ashauer has been invited to give a talk at the Gordon Research Conference "Water". The conference topic is "Grand Challenge Frontiers in the Aquatic Environmental Sciences" and it takes place in Holderness, NH, USA. Finally the EcoSummit2012 is another conference with very exciting topics and takes place in Columbus, OH, USA in October.

Two new papers on bioaccumulation and biotransformation came online just now :-) As both papers are open access you can find them directly at ES&T's website:

• Predicting concentrations of organic chemicals in fish by using toxicokinetic models
• Significance of xenobiotic metabolism for bioaccumulation kinetics of organic chemicals in Gammarus pulex

This summer, there will be a PhD summer course in Denmark on toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic (TKTD) modelling. Tjalling Jager will co-organise this course together with Nina Cedergreen and Andreas Kretschmann of the University of Copenhagen. The course will cover the process of building (relatively simple) TK and TKTD models, analysing their outputs, and fitting them to data. More information can be found on the course website: www.dynmodtox.dk.