Are marine invertebrates really at risk from endocrine-disrupting chemicals?

The challenges around evidence interpretation for the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on wildlife have been elegantly described in a recent restatement. Pursuing a causal link between EDCs and population-level effects in the marine environment is not an easy task because of the uncertainty generated by the (still) largely undescribed endocrinology of most marine invertebrates. This prevents an adequate understanding of the mechanisms involved in xenobiotic toxicity in nonvertebrate marine phyla and creates uncertainties for chemical management, especially suspected EDCs. In recent years, advancements in genome sequencing technologies expanded this knowledge and provided us with data and tools that can understand the diversity of endocrine systems from an evolutionary perspective. Indeed, genomewide searches provided endocrinologists with important insights. However, ecotoxicological studies often suffer from superficial interpretation of gene ontology terminology and assume functional conservation of pathways in cross-species extrapolations. Nevertheless, the newly developed tools and approaches allow us to better organise the evidence needed to characterise both hazard and risk from potential EDCs. Until some critical knowledge gaps are closed along with the misconceptions they caused in the past, we rely on vigilant monitoring programmes and the application of the precautionary principle in regulatory chemical management.