Probabilistic approaches to hazard assessment use species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) to characterize hazard for toxicants exposure for different species within a community. Many of the assumptions at the core of SSDs are unrealistic, among them the assumption that the tolerance levels of all species in a specific ecological community are a priori exchangeable for each new toxic substance. Here we propose the use of a particular test to detect situations where such an assumption is violated. Then, a new method based on non-nested random effects model is required to identify novel SSDs capable of taking into account species non-exchangeability. Credible intervals, representing SSD uncertainty, could be determined based on our procedure. This leads to new and reliable estimates of the environmental hazard. We present a Bayesian modeling approach to address model inference issues, using Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling.

中文翻译：

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通过物种敏感性分布进行生态危害评估：不可交换性问题

危害评估的概率方法使用物种敏感性分布 (SSD) 来表征社区内不同物种接触有毒物质的危害。SSDs 的许多核心假设是不切实际的，其中假设特定生态群落中所有物种的耐受水平对于每种新的有毒物质都是先验可交换的。在这里，我们建议使用特定测试来检测违反此类假设的情况。然后，需要一种基于非嵌套随机效应模型的新方法来识别能够考虑物种不可交换性的新型 SSD。代表 SSD 不确定性的可信区间可以根据我们的程序确定。这导致对环境危害的新的和可靠的估计。