About this Research Topic
The second International Conference on Microbial Ecotoxicology will be hosted in Montpellier (France) on October 6-9, 2020. This conference is organized by the Network of Microbial Ecotoxicology (https://ecotoxicomic.org/) and the Rovaltain Foundation for Scientific Cooperation (https://fcsrovaltain.org/). The conference will focus on the latest advances and discoveries in the field of microbial ecotoxicology as well as new tools that open up prospects for future innovations.
Microbial Ecotoxicology is a science at the intersection of a range of disciplines including microbial ecology, microbial toxicology, ecotoxicology, and analytical chemistry. The cutting-edge research produced by microbial ecotoxicologists tackles the demand from policy makers and civil society. Specifically, it contributes to respond to the tremendous challenges caused by intense anthropogenic activities that threaten both environmental and human health.
Microbial communities support several ecosystem functions and thus play a key role not only in biogeochemical cycles but also in a range of ecosystem services. Therefore the effects of pollutants on microbial communities can modify ecosystem functions and have profound consequences at higher levels of biological organization. Moreover, and due to their capacities to transform and degrade many pollutants, microbial communities play a key role in the environmental fate of such contaminants and their ecotoxicological impacts in the environment.
In this context, microbial ecotoxicology is facing many challenges questions including:
- Changes of microbial community structure and functions under contamination stress
- Description and understanding of complex systems: toxicants and targets, study to disentangle toxicant effects in microbial communities, including biodegradation of toxicants and bioremediation of contaminated sites
- Microbes for risk assessment in a changing world, development and validation of new methods to qualify environmental quality
- Bridging research to end-users, propose new insight in current environmental policies and in ecological engineering technologies based on microbial technologies for a more sustainable world
This Research Topic welcomes original results concerning these challenging questions as well as articles addressing the latest advances in microbial ecotoxicology.
Microbial Ecotoxicology is a science at the intersection of a range of disciplines including microbial ecology, microbial toxicology, ecotoxicology, and analytical chemistry. The cutting-edge research produced by microbial ecotoxicologists tackles the demand from policy makers and civil society. Specifically, it contributes to respond to the tremendous challenges caused by intense anthropogenic activities that threaten both environmental and human health.
Microbial communities support several ecosystem functions and thus play a key role not only in biogeochemical cycles but also in a range of ecosystem services. Therefore the effects of pollutants on microbial communities can modify ecosystem functions and have profound consequences at higher levels of biological organization. Moreover, and due to their capacities to transform and degrade many pollutants, microbial communities play a key role in the environmental fate of such contaminants and their ecotoxicological impacts in the environment.
In this context, microbial ecotoxicology is facing many challenges questions including:
- Changes of microbial community structure and functions under contamination stress
- Description and understanding of complex systems: toxicants and targets, study to disentangle toxicant effects in microbial communities, including biodegradation of toxicants and bioremediation of contaminated sites
- Microbes for risk assessment in a changing world, development and validation of new methods to qualify environmental quality
- Bridging research to end-users, propose new insight in current environmental policies and in ecological engineering technologies based on microbial technologies for a more sustainable world
This Research Topic welcomes original results concerning these challenging questions as well as articles addressing the latest advances in microbial ecotoxicology.
Keywords: microbial communities, pollutants, environmental risk assessment, multiple stress, biodegradation
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