Using phylogenetic information and chemical properties to predict species tolerances to pesticides.

Direct estimation of species' tolerance to pesticides and other toxic organic substances is a combinatorial problem, because of the large number of species-substance pairs. We propose a statistical modelling approach to predict tolerances associated with untested species-substance pairs, by using models fitted to tested pairs. This approach is based on the phylogeny of species and physico-chemical descriptors of pesticides, with both kinds of information combined in a bilinear model.