Thoré Eli S J, Vanden Berghen Birgit, Brendonck Luc, Pinceel Tom
Animal Ecology, Global Change and Sustainable Development, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; TRANSfarm - Science, Engineering & Technology Group, KU Leuven, Lovenjoel, Belgium.
Animal Ecology, Global Change and Sustainable Development, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Sci Total Environ. 2023 Jun 10;876:162746. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162746. Epub 2023 Mar 11.
Ecosystems around the world are increasingly polluted with pharmaceutical compounds that may perturb wildlife behaviour. Because many pharmaceuticals are continuously present in the aquatic environment, animals are often exposed to them across several life stages or even their entire life. Despite a large body of literature showing various impacts of exposure to pharmaceuticals on fish, hardly any long-term studies across different life stages have been conducted which makes it hard to accurately estimate the ecological outcomes of pharmaceutical pollution. Here, we performed a laboratory experiment in which we exposed hatchlings of the fish model Nothobranchius furzeri to an environmentally relevant concentration (0.5 μg/L) of the antidepressant fluoxetine until well into adulthood. We monitored total body length and geotaxic behaviour (i.e. gravity-mediated activity) of each fish as two traits that are ecologically relevant and naturally differ between juvenile and adult killifish. Fish exposed to fluoxetine were smaller compared to control fish, an effect that became more apparent as fish aged. Even though fluoxetine did not affect average swimming depth of either juveniles or adults, nor the time spent at the surface or bottom of the water column, exposed fish changed their position in the water column (depth) more frequently in the adult but not juvenile phase. These results suggest that important morphological and behavioural responses to pharmaceutical exposure-and their potential ecological consequences-may only emerge later in time and/or during specific life stages. Therefore, our results highlight the importance of considering ecologically relevant timescales across developmental stages when studying the ecotoxicology of pharmaceuticals.
世界各地的生态系统正日益受到药物化合物的污染，这些化合物可能会扰乱野生动物的行为。由于许多药物持续存在于水生环境中，动物常常在几个生命阶段甚至整个生命过程中接触到它们。尽管有大量文献表明接触药物对鱼类有各种影响，但几乎没有进行过跨越不同生命阶段的长期研究，这使得难以准确估计药物污染的生态后果。在此，我们进行了一项实验室实验，将鱼类模型费氏假鳃鳉的幼体暴露于环境相关浓度（0.5微克/升）的抗抑郁药氟西汀中，直至成年。我们监测了每条鱼的全长和趋地性行为（即重力介导的活动），将其作为两个在生态上相关且在幼年和成年鳉鱼之间自然存在差异的特征。与对照鱼相比，暴露于氟西汀的鱼体型较小，随着鱼龄增长，这种影响变得更加明显。尽管氟西汀既不影响幼鱼或成鱼的平均游泳深度，也不影响它们在水柱表面或底部停留的时间，但暴露的鱼在成年期而非幼年期更频繁地改变其在水柱中的位置（深度）。这些结果表明，对药物暴露的重要形态和行为反应及其潜在的生态后果可能只会在后期和/或特定生命阶段出现。因此，我们的结果凸显了在研究药物生态毒理学时考虑跨发育阶段的生态相关时间尺度的重要性。
