Effects of toxicants on populations: A qualitative approach II. first order kinetics

✍ Scribed by T. G. Hallam; C. E. Clark; G. S. Jordan

• Book ID: 104698708
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 654 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0303-6812
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00275908

✦ Synopsis

System level effects exhibited by a population subjected to a chronic or an acute dose of toxicant are the emphasis of this study. A three dimensional model of a toxicant and a population, with state variables (the population biomass, the concentration of toxicant in an organism, and the concentration of toxicant in the environment) coupled by a linear dose-response function, is analyzed analytically. One of the main results presents sufficient conditions, in terms of a system level parameter, for the persistence, and for the extinction, of a population exposed to a chronic dose of toxicant. When depuration and degradation are negligible processes, the effects of toxicant accumulation associated with an acute exposure of a population are analyzed in some detail. Both persistence and extinction are shown to be viable behavior modes of a population in this biochemical setting.