An Individual-Oriented Model for Ecologicl Risk Assessment of Wading Birds

Experts have voiced growing concern over the potential contribution of certain contaminants to reproductive failure problems in a range of different avian species. Scientists adopted an individual-oriented methodology for a study seeking to quantify the impacts of chronic contaminant exposure on individual birds. In the object-oriented model used in the effort, individual birds were represented as interacting objects. The actions of individual birds are implemented by passing to them appropriate messages. Researchers simulated a breeding colony of Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) as an assemblage of interacting individuals for which the daily actions of foraging, growth, and feeding of the young were simultaneously tracked over short time intervals for a nesting season.