| Medications are an increasing fact of human life, and improve our quality of life. However, unmetabolized byproducts of these medications are increasingly being detected in water bodies in Sweden and around the world. Since these “emerging contaminants” are present a low concentrations in the wild, pharmaceuticals in natural ecosystems do not cause direct mortality through toxicity; instead, they change behaviour and physiology that alter an animals’ interactions with their environment (e.g. interactions with conspecifics, habitat use, predator-prey interactions. While laboratory studies have shown that exposure to pharmaceuticals can change aspects of animal behaviour and physiology that are important for survival, there is virtually no understanding of whether these laboratory findings accurately portray or predict ecological effects in the wild. Regulations for pharmaceutical contaminants in the environment are non-existent, because policy makers lack an understanding of how these contaminants affect wild aquatic animals. Until now, very little has been done to resolve this important issue. However, thanks to recent technical advances within acoustic telemetry, detailed data on animal behaviour and physiology can now be monitored in natural aquatic ecosystems.
Through the use of high-resolution acoustic telemetry tags we will in this project track fish survival and behaviour in the wild, alongside a suite of physiological characteristics such as heart rate and swimming performance, which are important determinants of animal fitness. In this context we will study how behavior and physiology of fish change with pharmaceutical exposure and how that change in turn affects survival and growth in natural pond-systems. Surprisingly, telemetry technology has yet to be used for field ecotoxicological purposes, despite the obvious benefits of high environmental and ecological relevance. Using this technology allows us to connect laboratory findings to the effects in the real world, a type of scientific validation that is very much lacking today. Considering that pharmaceutical pollution has been identified as a serious threat to aquatic ecosystems globally this proposal would produce new and important knowledge imperative for protecting aquatic environments and ecosystem services connected to those environments. In addition, it will help to accomplish Sweden’s environmental objective for Flourishing Lakes and Streams by ensuring the quality of aquatic habitats for natural animal diversity.
Our earlier studies, mainly carried out in lab-settings, have shown that environmentally relevant concentrations of several different pharmaceuticals can change important behaviors of many species of fish (e.g. perch, roach, Atlantic salmon) and aquatic insects (e.g. damselflies and waterlouse) and that the effects on species interactions may be quite dramatic. These studies have been published in upper tier journals and attracted a lot of attention. |