SETAC Ecotoxicology of Amphibians and Reptiles Advisory Group

Minutes of the meeting of 4th May 2015 in Barcelona

Attendants: Annette Aldrich (AA), Kathryn Arnold, Cecilia Berg, Emmanuelle Bonneris, John Brausch (JB), Carsten Brühl (CB), Sina Egerer, Roel Evens, Emanuele Fasola (EF), Vitor Galhano, Guido Gonsior, Patrick Kabouw, Silvio Knaebe, Oliver Körner, Pia Kotslik, Patrick Lenhardt, Isabel Lopes (IL), Manuel Ortiz-Santaliestra (MOS), Silvia Pieper (SP), Henna Piha, Silvia Rodríguez, Peter Sowig, Klaus Swarowsky, Scott Weir, James Wheeler.

1) Advisory group issues

The new composition of the Steering Committee (StC) of the group is presented, including the new members incorporated in 2015: Annette Aldrich, John Brausch and Stacey Lance. Two of these new members (AA and JB) are present in the room and introduce themselves. There is a good balance between sectors but we still have a trong geographical bias, with only one member from Asia-Pacific and no members from Latin America.

There is not any StC member whose term ends at the end of the present year. However, because of the temporal coincidence of the terms of the funding members (who were allowed to extend their participation in the StC for an extra term) and the StC members incorporated in 2013, seven out of the 12 current StC members will finish their terms at the end of 2016.

Chris Salice’s term as chair will finish at the end of 2015. If nobody else volunteers, MOS should become the new chair. However, whereas the term as chair lasts for two years (2016 and 2017), MOS’s term as StC member will finish at the end of 2016. We will ask our liaison in the SETAC World Council to see how to solve this incongruence.

The possibility of extended the activities of the EARAG to the regional chapters is mentioned. This would include the organization of scientific session during chapter meetings and a close contact with members. No decision is taken with this regard.

2) SETAC issues

SETAC Europe has just launched the program for Certification of Environmental Risk Assessors (see information at http://certification.setac.eu). One of the objectives of the EARAG about this program should be guarantee that a competent training on ecotoxicology of amphibians and reptiles is offered to students enrolled in the program. There is one course coordinated by IL celebrated in Aveiro from 11 to 15 May that has been approved as part of the SETAC-CRA program, but the EARAG will consider supporting other courses that can be celebrated in the future.

3) Scientific presentations There is a scientific session on ecotoxicology of amphibians and reptiles, sponsored by the EARAG, during the SETAC –EU meeting. Originally, 12 requests for platforms were received but the scientific committee allowed only one time block (i.e. 6 platforms) to that session. For that reasons, the chairs of the session (MOS and IL) contacted the authors of the communications that were not considered as platforms (and therefore accepted as posters) to give them the opportunity to present a platform, out of the scientific program, during this meeting. The following platform was presented:

- Temporal coincidence of amphibian migration and pesticide applications on arable fields in spring (authors: Carsten Brühl, Gert Berger, Patrick Lenhardt), presented by CB.

After the presentation there is some discussion focused on the presented data and on general issues of pesticide risk assessment on amphibians. We decide to link this discussion with the next point of the meeting agenda.

4) Guidance document on risk assessment on amphibians and reptiles A few slides sent by Franz Streissl, who cannot attend the meeting, are shown. The slides show the timeline that the EFSA pesticide unit is considering for the development of the Guidance Document for risk assessment of amphibians and reptiles (GD), as follows:

- 2016: Opinion addressing the state of science

- 2016-17: Public consultation on the opinion (if it is decided that GD is necessary):

- 2017: Guidance of EFSA

- 2017: Public consultation on the draft Guidance of EFSA To develop the GD, EFSA considers necessary to retrieve more information about the presence and habitat use of amphibians and reptiles in agricultural habitats and to improve the knowledge on their sensitivity to pesticides in comparison to other vertebrates. The slides also summarize the main conclusion of the external technical report on amphibians requested by EFSA and published in 2012:

- Dermal exposure is likely to be a major exposure route but there is a lack of methods to estimate it.

- Little information is available on other routes like soil ingestion or inhalation.

- Toxicity values are available mainly for aquatic life stages, while the few values available for terrestrial stages make the comparison with bird and mammal data difficult. - Aquatic stages may be protected by current procedures with fish, but more information is necessary for terrestrial risk assessment. A discussion among the attendants follow this presentation, focused on actions that can be taken with regard to the development of the GD: AA informs about the next workshop on amphibians and risk assessment organized by the Swiss government where there will be participation of scientists, regulators, industry and farmers. It seems clear that there will not be standard testing available for amphibians and reptiles before the end of the GD. However, regulators do not need standard tests but simply praxis to describe toxicity. It is important to work on the mechanisms of actions of pesticides on amphibians and reptiles to better characterize toxicity. In this regard, the option of implementing in silico models can also be considered, which meets the bioethical criteria on reduction of animal testing as well. Three specific actions are proposed:

- EF suggests contacting experts in modelling to ask them about the possibility of implementing models for risk characterization in amphibians and reptiles.

- MOS suggests contacting herpetological societies to retrieve information from herpetologists about items that can be useful for risk assessment (e.g. habitat use, home ranges, diet).

- SP suggests the possibility of integrating in a COST action to work on a common strategy, involving not only ecotoxicologists and risk assessors, but also people from other fields that can potentially provide helpful support. No specific decision is taken with regard to these proposed actions. 5) Other questions There are no more questions.