ABSTRACT
The goal of ecotoxicology is to assess the impact of foreign substances on systemic levels higher than that of the individual. The attempt to provide a mathematical and empirical description of the fluctuations in a population, as well as the population genetics, is the subject of population ecology. Ecotoxicology is not merely a compound of two subjects; it projects toxicological questions onto the ecosystem level. The degree to which test results obtained in the more or less comprehensive, easily manageable experimental context of the laboratory are relevant for the real conditions of an ecosystem is the central problem of ecotoxicology. Ecotoxicology is devoted to the study of structural and functional system characteristics at all levels of organization, but these characteristics are extremely disparate.
