In addition, biologically-based models can be applied in more data rich situations and these include generic or species-specific models such as toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic models, dynamic energy budget models, physiologically based models, and models for ecosystem hazard assessment i.e. In silico models are then introduced and include quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models, which support filling data gaps when no chemical property or ecotoxicological data are available. This chapter aims to introduce the reader to the basic principles of environmental risk assessment of chemicals and highlights the usefulness of tiered approaches within weight of evidence approaches in relation to problem formulation i.e., data availability, time and resource availability. As well as specifically answering the question on rabbit versus hare vulnerability, this study generally illustrates the potential application of models for setting focal species for risk assessments. This did not occur even though the toxicant and exposure scenarios tested here were extreme and, in fragmented landscapes at scales used here, will not occur in reality from the use of plant protection products on crop fields. Rabbits would only be more vulnerable than hares if the entire population were to be exposed simultaneously, when lower body mass would then be a critical factor. For EU risk assessment of plant protection products, these results clearly indicate that if the protection goal is population-level impacts, either in abundance and/or distribution, then the hare is a much more vulnerable species than the rabbit under all the conditions tested. This was contrasted with the same (imaginary) toxic stressor applied to the already existing ALMaSS hare model. We then tested how robust rabbit populations are to an (imaginary) extreme toxic stressor at a landscape level in a variety of landscapes, and to what extremes key uncertain model parameters must be pushed to cause extinctions. Development and testing following a pattern-oriented modelling protocol resulted in a model able to replicate local and landscape-level rabbit population patterns.
This paper describes the development and testing of the ALMaSS rabbit model and its baseline, and subsequently its application to the question of lagomorph population vulnerability in environmental risk assessment (ERA).
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