Industry is continually synthesizing new chemicals, the regulation of which requires evaluation of the potential danger for human health and the environment.
In the standard tests groups of animals are exposed to different concentrations of chemicals and different effects such as survival, growth or reproduction are monitored.
Biology-based methods not only aim to describe observed effects, but also to understand them in terms of underlying processes such as toxicokinetics, mortality, feeding, growth and reproduction (Kooijman 1997).
As the approach is biologically based it is also possible by using the dynamic energy budget theory[10] to incorporate multiple stressors (e.g. effects of food restriction, temperature, etc.
)[11] and processes that are active under field conditions (e.g. adaptation, population dynamics, species interactions, life cycle phenomena, etc.).