How Pollution Will Affect Wildlife Behavior

There are a number of factors that can influence animal behavior. But behavioral toxicology is gaining a special interest in environmental sciences. A team of researchers at University of Portsmouth have made new tests that will help gain more knowledge in effects of pollution on behavior of wildlife. Behavior of any organism is crucial for its survival as it helps them feed, find mates and escape predators. Any substance that affects this behavior has the potential to significantly alter the food chain.  The researchers designed experiments around shrimp-like crustaceans called amphipods that are used to monitor environmental toxicology.

They tried to alter their general preferences like swimming away from light (negative phototaxis) or preferably touching sides of tanks (positive thigmotaxis) by altering size and shape of the testing tanks. They found that size and shape can significantly alter these behaviors like the speed at which they swam and time they spent next to a wall (wall-hugging). These findings were published in the Journal of PeerJ.

Toxicologists around the world do work on same processes but they do not always experiment on the same species for the pollution testing. For eg. if a chemical has the potential to change a particular behavior but two closely related species have different reactions to it then this might mask effects of pollutant.

By: Neha Maheshwari

Content: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/lifestyle/pets-and-environment/300718/how-pollution-can-alter-wildlife-behaviour.html