Virgile Baudrot

• PhD
• CEO at Qonfluens

In the field of Plant Protection Products (PPP), the combination of multiple active ingredients is a common strategy to improve the efficacy against target species. However, these mixtures may expose non-target species to untested chemical combinations due to varied application and degradation pathways. Developing a method to predict the effects of...

Decisions in Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) about impacts of chemical compounds on different species are based on critical effect indicators such as the 50% lethal concentration (LC50). Regulatory documents recommend concentration-response (or concentration-effect) model fitting on standard toxicity test data to get LC50 values. However, toxic...

Three species of polyphagous Liriomyza leafminers (Diptera: Agromyzidae), Liriomyza huidobrensis, L. sativae, and L. trifolii, are internationally significant pests of vegetable and nursery crops that have each been recently detected on the Australian mainland. Due to the early stages of these invasions in Australia, it is unclear how climatic cond...

Decisions in Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) about impacts of chemical compounds on different species are based on critical effect indices such as the 50% lethal concentration ( LC 50 ). Regulatory documents recommend dose-response model fitting on standard toxicity test data to get LC 50 values. However, toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic (TKTD) mode...

Increasing confidence in using in vitro and in silico model-based data to aid the chemical risk assessment process is one of the most significant challenges faced by regulatory authorities. A crucial concern is taking full advantage of scientifically valid physiologically-based kinetic (PBK) models. Nevertheless, risk assessors remain unwilling to...

The R-package rbioacc allows to analyse experimental data from bioaccumulation tests where organisms are exposed to a chemical (exposure) then put into clean media (depuration). Internal concentrations are measured over time during the experiment. rbioacc provides turnkey functions to visualise and analyse such data. Under a Bayesian framework, rbi...

Figure Increase the confidence in using in vitro and in silico data to aid the chemical risk assessment process is one, if not the most, important challenge currently facing regulatory authorities. A particularly crucial concern is to fully take advantage of scientifically valid physiologically-based kinetic (PBK) models. Nevertheless, risk assesso...

In the European Union, more than 100,000 man-made chemical substances are awaiting an environmental risk assessment (ERA). Simultaneously, ERA of chemicals has now entered a new era. Indeed, recent recommendations from regulatory bodies underline a crucial need for the use of mechanistic effect models, allowing assessments that are not only ecologi...

Models that can predict the dynamics of larger scale ecological processes are increasingly important in a rapidly changing world. The Julia language gives a unique opportunity to produce new, generic tools to develop spatial mechanistic models, and to simultaneously increase their performance, resolution and predictive power. Here, we describe two...

The R package `rbioacc` is dedicated to the analysis of experimental data collected from bioaccumulation tests. It provides ready-to-use functions to visualise a data set and to estimate bioaccumulation metrics to be further used in support of environmental risk assessment, in full compliance with regulatory requirements. Such metrics are classical...

In the European Union, more than 100,000 man-made chemical substances are awaiting an environmental risk assessment (ERA). Simultaneously, ERA of these chemicals has now entered a new era requiring determination of risks for physiologically diverse species exposed to several chemicals, often in mixtures. Additionally, recent recommendations from re...

Toxicokinetics-Toxicodynamics (TKTD) models are increasingly used for inference of toxicity indices of interest in Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) thanks to their clear description of numerous mechanisms , from the kinetics of compounds inside organisms (Toxicokinetics, TK) to their related damages and effect dynamics at the individual level (T...

Lepidopteran‐active Bt‐toxins expressed in genetically modified (GM) maize events can adversely affect non‐target lepidopteran (NTL) species when larvae consume harmful amounts of Bt‐maize pollen deposited on their host plants. The briskaR‐NTL project, as commissioned by the European Food Safety Authority, aims to: (i) further develop a spatially‐e...

Package morse is devoted to the analysis of experimental data collected from standard toxicity tests. It provides ready-to-use functions to visualize a data set and to estimate several toxicity indices to be further used in support of environmental risk assessment in full compliance with regulatory requirements. Such toxicity indices are indeed cla...

In the European Union, more than 100,000 man-made chemical substances are awaiting an environmental risk assessment (ERA). Simultaneously, ERA of chemicals has now entered a new era. Indeed, recent recommendations from regulatory bodies underline a crucial need for the use of mechanistic effect models, allowing assessments that are not only ecologi...

In the European Union, more than 100,000 man-made chemical substances are awaiting an environmental risk assessment (ERA). Simultaneously, ERA of chemicals has now entered a new era. Indeed, recent recommendations from regulatory bodies underline a crucial need for the use of mechanistic effect models, allowing assessments that are not only ecologi...

Predictive environmental risk scenarios are today of major interest for environmental risk assessment as they provide plausible and consistent descriptions of possible effects of chemical in natura. In particular, they can be used for predictions of the future as consistent descriptions of pathways towards desired targets to protect. One single sce...

Raw data on the number of deaths at a country level generally indicate a spatially variable distribution of COVID-19 incidence. An important issue is whether this pattern is a consequence of environmental heterogeneities, such as the climatic conditions, during the course of the outbreak. Another fundamental issue is to understand the spatial sprea...

Discrepancies in population structures, decision making, health systems and numerous other factors result in various COVID-19-mortality dynamics at country scale, and make the forecast of deaths in a country under focus challenging. However, mortality dynamics of countries that are ahead of time implicitly include these factors and can be used as r...

Raw data on the cumulative number of deaths at a country level generally indicate a spatially variable distribution of the incidence of COVID-19 disease. An important issue is to determine whether this spatial pattern is a consequence of environmental heterogeneities, such as the climatic conditions, during the course of the outbreak. Another funda...

Objective. Countries presently apply different strategies to control the COVID-19 outbreak. Differences in population structures, decision making, health systems and numerous other factors result in various trajectories in terms of mortality at country scale. Our objective in this manuscript is to disentangle the future of second-line European coun...

Understanding pesticide impacts on populations of target/non‐target species and communities is a challenge to applied ecology. When predators that otherwise regulate pest densities ingest prey contaminated with pesticides, this can suppress predator populations by secondary poisoning. It is, however, unknown how species relationships and protocols...

Providing reliable environmental quality standards (EQSs) is a challenging issue in environmental risk assessment (ERA). These EQSs are derived from toxicity endpoints estimated from dose-response models to identify and characterize the environmental hazard of chemical compounds released by human activities. These toxicity endpoints include the cla...

Once released into the environment antibiotics can kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria, and in turn potentially have effects on bacterial community structure and ecosystem function. Environmental risk assessment (ERA) seeks to establish protection limits to minimise chemical impacts on the environment, but recent evidence suggests that the curre...

Providing reliable environmental quality standards (EQS) is a challenging issue for environmental risk assessment (ERA). These EQS are derived from toxicity endpoints estimated from dose-response models to identify and characterize the environmental hazard of chemical compounds as those released by human activities. The classical toxicity endpoints...

Mechanistic modeling approaches, such as the toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic (TKTD) framework, are promoted by international institutions such as the European Food Safety Authority and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to assess the environmental risk of chemical products generated by human activities. TKTD models can encompass...

morse: Modelling Tools for Reproduction and Survival Data in Ecotoxicology. Tools for ecotoxicologists and regulators dedicated to the mathematical and statistical modelling of toxicity test data. They use advanced and innovative methods for a valuable quantitative environmental risk assessment.

Toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic (TKTD) models, as the General Unified Threshold model of Survival (GUTS), provide a consistent process-based framework compared to classical dose-response models to analyze both time and concentration-dependent data sets. However, the extent to which GUTS models (Stochastic Death (SD) and Individual Tolerance (IT)) lead...

In response to anthropogenic eutrophication and global warming, deep-water oxygen depletion is expected to have large effects on freshwater lake biogeochemistry and resident communities. In particular, it has been observed that deep-water hypoxia may potentially lead to regime shifts of lake benthic communities. We explored such community shifts by...

La structure et l’intensité des interactions ressources-consommateurs qui forment les réseaux trophiques régulent une très grande partie des transferts de biomasse mais aussi de contaminants biologiques et chimiques dans les écosystèmes. L’objectif de la thèse est de développer des modèles permettant d’étudier les mécanismes de transport des contam...

The ability for a generalist consumer to adapt its foraging strategy (the multi-species functional response, MSFR) is a milestone in ecology as it contributes to the structure of food webs. The trophic interaction between a generalist predator, as the red fox or the barn owl, and its prey community, mainly composed of small mammals, has been em...