SPACEMOD project
Spatially explicit modelling of chemical exposure and its impacts on terrestrial food webs, to support risk assessment and the rehabilitation of polluted sites.
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> from lab to landscape_
Models and software to assess wildlife health.
Qonfluens is an R&D and consulting company for environmental risk assessment. We turn laboratory, in vitro and mesocosm data into predictive models that regulators, industry and research teams can use.
What we do
From test results to risk across landscapes
We work with academic and industrial R&D teams, from a single toxicity test to the exposure of a whole food web.
Regulatory statistics
Dose-response and species sensitivity distribution (SSD) analyses that follow OECD test guidelines and OECD guidance No. 54.
Survival, reproduction and growth tests; ECx and HCx estimates.
↻ Example from a published paper
A survival test fitted the Bayesian way: the curve, its 95% credible band and the LC50 with its uncertainty.
Baudrot & Charles (2021) morse: an R-package to analyse toxicity test data. JOSS · Try the app
Mechanistic modelling
Toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic (TK-TD) models, such as GUTS and PBTK, that explain effects over time and extrapolate them to new exposure scenarios.
From lab and in vitro data to predictions in silico.
↻ Example from a published paper
How many times a real exposure profile must be multiplied to halve survival: the LP50, with its uncertainty, from a GUTS model.
Spatial risk
Exposure to pollutant mixtures and their effects across landscapes and food webs, from soil contamination maps to risk indices.
SPACEMOD and the spacemodR package.
↻ Example from a published paper
Wood mice from highly and weakly contaminated sites around a former smelter: pollution and diet shape their immune response.
Open science & projects
From landscape to organism, and back
A substance in the landscape, whether a chemical, a pharmaceutical or a biocontrol agent, becomes a dose in target and non-target organisms, then an effect on their physiology that propagates up to the fitness of their populations, which in turn changes how individuals are exposed and whether populations persist. Each project covers part of this loop. Point at a project below, or tap it, to light up its steps.
- Use & management. Pesticides, pharmaceuticals and biocides are used or released; control strategies and site management decide where and how much.
- Environmental fate. Transport, degradation and transfer through soil, water and food webs give a map of concentrations.
- Movement & exposure. Where animals feed, move and shelter decides which contamination they meet.
- Dose & body burden. Uptake and toxicokinetics turn exposure into internal concentrations: impregnation, bioaccumulation.
- Physiological response. Toxicodynamics and adverse outcome pathways, from a molecular initiating event to an adverse outcome.
- Survival, growth, reproduction. Effects on individuals, as measured in standard toxicity tests.
- Populations & communities. Pest control efficacy, decline or recovery of non-target species across the landscape, which feeds back into how products are used.
spacemodR R package
The R package behind SPACEMOD: transfer and impacts of pollutant mixtures in food webs, from soil pollution maps.
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MIND project
Multi-exposure risk indices for wild vertebrates, from pesticide concentrations measured in hair and feathers.
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Neural ODEs for mixtures code
Bayesian neural ODE TK-TD models that learn how compounds in a mixture interact to affect survival.
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Ecotox Lab web apps
Dose-response models for OECD tests and species sensitivity distributions, free in the browser.
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About
Translational safety and ecological modelling
We study why some populations rise to become crop pests or vectors of disease, while others decline toward extinction, putting the species that depend on them at risk. We look at the part human activities play in both, through pollution, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and land use, because the health of people, animals and ecosystems is one.
Qonfluens was founded in April 2022 in Occitanie, France. We study how biological systems respond to pharmaceuticals, chemicals and pathogens across space and time, and build mechanistic models that link laboratory findings to ecological dynamics.
Our work supports environmental risk assessment, ecosystem safety and the development of safer compounds.
The team: Virgile Baudrot and Quentin Devalloir.
Contact
Work with us
Tell us about your data, your model or your regulatory question.