CADDIS Volume 2: Sources, Stressors & Responses
Responses
What are responses?
Responses are the biological results of exposure to proximate stressors. Currently there are no response modules on CADDIS, but a module for fish DELTS (deformities, erosions, lesions and tumors) is now under development.
How do responses relate to candidate causes?
A candidate cause is a hypothesized cause of a specific environmental impairment, sufficiently credible to be analyzed in a causal assessment. A candidate cause can be simply a proximate stressor, or the stressor directly responsible for the observed biological response (e.g., low dissolved oxygen concentration). However, a candidate cause also may include more detailed information about the causal pathway, such as the mechanism or organismal level response which resulted in the ultimate response of interest (e.g., fish died due to asphyxiation). Including more detail when listing candidate causes may help identify ways to distinguish among different candidate causes included in the assessment.
What are sources, and how do they relate to candidate causes?
What are stressors, and how do they relate to candidate causes?