Impacts of Pollutants on Wildlife and Ecosystem Health

Environmental toxicology examines how chemical contaminants affect wildlife, ecological communities, and ecosystem health across terrestrial and aquatic environments. Human activities release a wide range of pollutants, including agricultural pesticides, post-fire contaminants, industrial runoff, wastewater-derived chemicals, plastics, pharmaceuticals, and other emerging contaminants. These stressors can affect wildlife physiology, behaviour, reproduction, development, immunity, metabolism, and survival, while also influencing biodiversity, food webs, and ecosystem functions. However, important gaps remain in understanding chronic and low-dose exposure, bioaccumulation, mixture toxicity, early-life and transgenerational effects, and interactions between pollutants and other stressors, including climate change, habitat loss, disease, and invasive species. Further research is needed to connect toxicological mechanisms and individual-level responses with long-term effects on wildlife populations and ecosystem health.This Research Topic aims to improve understanding of how pollutants affect wildlife and ecosystem health by integrating environmental exposure assessment, toxicology, ecology, and risk assessment. It will consider how pollutants move through terrestrial and aquatic environments, how they are taken up and processed by organisms, and how they influence molecular, cellular, physiological, behavioural, and reproductive processes. The Research Topic will also examine how individual responses translate into effects on populations, communities, biodiversity, food webs, and ecosystem functions. Studies addressing pollutant interactions, biomarkers, omics approaches, innovative toxicological methods, environmental monitoring, remediation, conservation, and policy development are particularly encouraged.To gather further insights into the impacts of pollutants on wildlife and ecosystem health across terrestrial and aquatic environments, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Exposure pathways, environmental fate, transport, bioavailability, and bioaccumulation• Agricultural pesticides, post-fire contaminants, industrial runoff, and wastewater-derived pollutants• Emerging chemical threats, including pharmaceuticals, plastics, nanomaterials, and other contaminants of concern• Acute, chronic, developmental, reproductive, behavioural, neurotoxic, immunotoxic, endocrine-disrupting, and genotoxic effects• Toxicokinetics, toxicodynamics, biomarkers, molecular mechanisms, and omics-based approaches• Mixture toxicity and interactions between pollutants and climate change, habitat loss, disease, or invasive species• Effects of pollutants on wildlife populations, communities, biodiversity, food webs, and ecosystem functions• Environmental monitoring, ecotoxicological methods, risk assessment, and predictive toxicology• Pollution mitigation, remediation, restoration, conservation, and environmental management• Regulatory frameworks, public policy, and the implications of toxicological evidence for ecosystem protection Topic editors: Jiahua Guo, Jiezhang Mo, Jackson Nkoh Nkoh Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83799/impacts-of-pollutants-on-wildlife-and-ecosystem-health