Time-dependent species sensitivity distributions.

Time is a central component of toxicity assessments. However, current ecotoxicological practice marginalizes time in concentration-response (C-R) modeling and species sensitivity distribution (SSD) analyses. For C-R models, time is invariably fixed, and toxicity measures are estimated from a function fitted to the data at that time. The estimated toxicity measures are used as inputs to the SSD modeling phase, which similarly avoids explicit recognition of the temporal component. The present study extends some commonly employed probability models for SSDs to derive theoretical results that characterize the time-dependent nature of hazardous concentration (HCx) values. The authors' results show that even from very simple assumptions, more complex patterns in the SSD time dependency can be revealed.