Fisheries Department, Sparsholt College, Westley Lane, Hampshire, SO21 2NF, UK; Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Ferry Road, Portsmouth, PO4 9LY, UK.
School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Brighton, Brighton, BN2 4HP, UK.
Environ Pollut. 2020 Dec;267:115386. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115386. Epub 2020 Aug 20.
The prevalence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in lotic habitats is increasing, with the main source of these contaminants being effluent from waste water treatment works (WwTW). There is still much uncertainty about the impacts of these PPCPs at environmentally relevant concentrations and their potential effects on aquatic ecology. Behaviour is a sensitive endpoint which can help evaluate possible population level effects from changes in physiology. This paper evaluates the effects of WwTW effluent on a range of behaviours in the freshwater invertebrate, Gammarus pulex. Effluent taken from the outflow of two WwTW in southern England was used in the study. Behavioural analyses, namely feeding rate, phototaxis, activity, velocity and precopula pairing, were measured in G. pulex following a period of one and three weeks after exposure to a 50% or 100% effluent and a control. Mortality remained very low throughout the 3 week experiment (0-10%, n = 20) and no significant changes in moulting frequency were observed (p > 0.05). No significant effects on feeding or velocity or phototaxis following 3 weeks of effluent exposures were observed (p > 0.05). However, significant reductions were observed in the overall activity over 3 weeks across which appeared to be exacerbated by exposure to effluents. Interestingly, males exposed for 3 weeks to WwTW effluent re-paired with unexposed females significantly faster (4-6x) than control animals. This result was consistent between the effluents taken from the two WwTW. The implications of these behavioural changes are currently unknown but highlight the need for a varied set of tools to study the behavioural changes in wildlife.
药品和个人护理产品（PPCPs）在流水生境中的流行率正在增加，这些污染物的主要来源是废水处理厂（WwTW）的废水。对于这些 PPCPs 在环境相关浓度下的影响及其对水生生态的潜在影响，仍存在很大的不确定性。行为是一个敏感的终点，可以帮助评估生理变化可能对种群水平产生的影响。本文评估了 WwTW 废水对淡水无脊椎动物秀丽隐杆线虫（Gammarus pulex）一系列行为的影响。研究中使用了从英格兰南部两个 WwTW 流出的废水。在暴露于 50%或 100%废水和对照物 1 周和 3 周后，对秀丽隐杆线虫进行了摄食率、趋光性、活性、速度和交配前配对等行为分析。整个 3 周实验过程中的死亡率一直非常低（0-10%，n=20），蜕皮频率也没有明显变化（p>0.05）。暴露于废水 3 周后，摄食或速度或趋光性没有观察到显著影响（p>0.05）。然而，在 3 周的暴露期间，总体活动明显减少，而暴露于废水中似乎加剧了这种减少。有趣的是，暴露于 WwTW 废水 3 周的雄性与未暴露的雌性重新配对的速度明显更快（4-6 倍），比对照动物快。这一结果在两个 WwTW 所取的废水中是一致的。这些行为变化的影响目前尚不清楚，但强调需要使用一系列不同的工具来研究野生动物的行为变化。
