How depressing! It is all in the food chain. Don't choke!
Is this a case of alarmism and hysteria? How much are artificial lab results comparable to reality? How much of this kind of research is more comparable to a worst case scenario?
The possible effects of medications dissolved in bodies of water has been reported for several decades. So far it seems we have managed the issue quite well without causing a catastrophe or anything like it.
The strengths of this study seems to be that it is a long-term study (five years) over several generations of subjects.
"An international study ... has revealed how long-term exposure to pharmaceutical pollutants is dramatically altering fish behavior, life history, and reproductive traits. ...
Pharmaceutical pollutants, especially antidepressants like fluoxetine, have become a pervasive issue in water bodies worldwide. These pollutants, often introduced through wastewater discharge, persist at low levels in rivers, lakes, and oceans. ...
The five-year investigation, focusing on wild-caught guppies exposed to the widely prescribed antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac), highlights the profound and interconnected effects of this pollutant on aquatic ecosystems. ..."
From the abstract:
"1. In our rapidly changing world, understanding how species respond to shifting conditions is of paramount importance. Pharmaceutical pollutants are widespread in aquatic ecosystems globally, yet their impacts on animal behaviour, life-history and reproductive allocation remain poorly understood, especially in the context of intraspecific variation in ecologically important traits that facilitate species' adaptive capacities.
2. We test whether a widespread pharmaceutical pollutant, fluoxetine (Prozac), disrupts the trade-off between individual-level (co)variation in behavioural, life-history and reproductive traits of freshwater fish.
3. We exposed the progeny of wild-caught guppies (Poecilia reticulata) to three field-relevant levels of fluoxetine (mean measured concentrations: 0, 31.5 and 316 ng/L) for 5 years, across multiple generations. We used 12 independent laboratory populations and repeatedly quantified activity and risk-taking behaviour of male guppies, capturing both mean behaviours and variation within and between individuals across exposure treatments. We also measured key life-history traits (body condition, coloration and gonopodium size) and assessed post-copulatory sperm traits (sperm vitality, number and velocity) that are known to be under strong sexual selection in polyandrous species. Intraspecific (co)variation of these traits was analysed using a comprehensive, multivariate statistical approach.
4. Fluoxetine had a dose-specific (mean) effect on the life-history and sperm trait of guppies: low pollutant exposure altered male body condition and increased gonopodium size, but reduced sperm velocity. At the individual level, fluoxetine reduced the behavioural plasticity of guppies by eroding their within-individual variation in both activity and risk-taking behaviour. Fluoxetine also altered between-individual correlations in pace-of-life syndrome traits: it triggered the emergence of correlations between behavioural and life-history traits (e.g. activity and body condition) and between life-history and sperm traits (e.g. gonopodium size and sperm vitality), but collapsed other between-individual correlations (e.g. activity and gonopodium size).
5. Our results reveal that chronic exposure to global pollutants can affect phenotypic traits at both population and individual levels, and even alter individual-level correlations among such traits in a dose-specific manner. We discuss the need to integrate individual-level analyses and test behaviour in association with life-history and reproductive traits to fully understand how animals respond to human-induced environmental change."
Antidepressant pollution is rewiring fish behaviour and reproduction, study finds (original news release)
Fig. 1 Schematic of the exposure protocol and experimental design.
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