The Importance of Ecological Traits in Assessing Seabird Vulnerability to Environmental Risks

Abstract

Seabirds play a key role in ecosystem functioning, and they may serve as a useful indicator of its health status. The lack of predictive performance to extrapolate the toxicity results of model species to native species is a major source of uncertainty in an environmental risk assessment approach, calling for the use of non-conventional model species. The focus of this chapter is on the analysis of the external exposure stage of risk factor/s in an environmental risk assessment. Here, we explore different approaches to assessing the vulnerability of seabirds to environmental risks, discuss current challenges, propose a trait-based solution to these challenges and explore additional complicating factors in using non-model species in environmental risk assessments. The trait-based approach is an ecological dimension reduction technique to make sense of datasets with a high species dimension. This approach exists hand-in-hand with additional experimental approaches that investigate the internal response of a specific biological receptor of interest to risk factors given a prescribed level of exposure. When combined, these approaches should provide a more complete picture of the impact of risk factor/s to native species and their communities. Integrating non-conventional species in environmental risk assessments is one important step toward this goal.