The aim of GBTA Group is the environmental monitoring and evaluation of the ecological risk posed by environmental toxins to populations, communities and ecosystems. Their recent work focused on the study of endocrine disruptors and other substances contained in plastic materials to different organisms, including the changes in genome expression and induced epigenetic alterations. The emphasis is in common signalling routes, potential biomarkers with the aim of providing elements for evaluating the risk of this new type of pollutants in the natural invertebrate populations of aquatic ecosystems. Moreover, the group work on a second line research  focuses in understanding physiological responses of insects to plant defences, throughout molecular approaches. In this sense, the group has performed interesting progress in the inclusion of molecular parameters as suitable elements to be considered in the evaluation of the toxicity of many compounds in different insect species like chironomids and aphids.