Interspecies correlations

Abstract

For chemicals acting by a uniform mode in different organisms (e.g. non-specific toxicants), interspecies extrapolations constitute a further means of obtaining toxicity data not available from experiments. Several statistical tools — the same as used to derive QSARs — may be used to establish taxonomic correlations. Regression analysis provides a relation on a one-by-one species basis (e.g. Holcombe, Phipps and Fiandt, 1983; Suter, Vaughan and Gardner, 1983; Janardan, Olson and Schaeffer, 1984; LeBlanc, 1984; Thurston et al., 1985; Suter and Rosen, 1986; Yoshioka, Ose and Sato, 1986; Blum and Speece, 1991). For a two-species comparison this can be displayed by a regression function, for n species by a correlation matrix. Correlations of acute effects data between related aquatic or terrestrial species may predict toxicity within one order of magnitude: Suter, Vaughan and Gardner (1983) calculated the r2 coefficient of determination for intercorrelations of aquatic toxicity data for congeneric species r2 = 0.90, for genera r2 = 0.89, for families r2 = 0.82 and for orders r2= 0.74.