Our interest is in obtaining a scientifically defensible endpoint for measuring ecological risks to populations exposed to chronic, low-level radiation, and radiation with concomitant exposure to chemicals. To do so, we believe that we must understand the extent to which molecular damage is detrimental at the individual and population levels of biological organization. Ecological risk analyses based on molecular damage, without an understanding of the impacts to higher levels of biological organization, could cause cleanup strategies on DOE sites to be overly conservative and unnecessarily expensive. Our goal is to determine the relevancy of sublethal cellular damage to the performance of individuals and populations. We think that we can achieve this by using novel biological dosimeters in controlled, manipulative dose/effects experiments, and by coupling changes in metabolic rates and energy allocation patterns to meaningful population response variables such as age-specific survivorship, reproductive output, age at maturity and longevity.
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