Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #486

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'Prozac Pollution' Making Fish Less Aggressive, Says Study
Pharmaceutical pollution in water- ways is having a "disturbing impact" on fish, according to new research.
Psychoactive drugs - including antidepressants - are altering the reproductive behaviour, anxi- ety levels, and anti-predator responses of fish in the wild, according to Australia's Monash University.
The findings of the impact on the social behaviour of fish has been published in the journal Biology Today.
Dr Jake Martin, from the universi- ty's school of bio- logical sciences,
said: "Our research found that the antide- pressant pollutant fluoxetine (com- monly marketed as Prozac) did not alter behav- iour of solitary fish.
"But in a group setting, fluoxetine exposure disrupt-
ed the frequency of aggressive interactions and food consump- tion."
He added: "The results are signifi- cant because they suggest that behavioural tests in social isolation may not accu- rately predict the
environmental risk of chemical pollutants for group-living species."
According to the research, Prozac didn't change the feeding and for- aging behaviour of solitary fish, however when it was applied to
whole groups of fish it had a sup- pressive effect.
Last year, anoth- er study covering the impact of Prozac pollution on fish said it could last for three genera- tions, blunting the stress responses in exposed
embryos and any of that embryo's descendants once it had matured.
The study, from the University of Ottowa, showed how zebrafish didn't explore their tank as much when they were treated with Prozac.
Dr Vance Trudeau, a neu- roendocrinolo- gist, said there were good rea- sons to believe
the effects that his study revealed could also occur in humans.
This is because the core stress hormone corti- sone has the same impact in fish as it does on humans.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine