Advancing the Spatiotemporal Dimension of Wildlife–Pollution Interactions

Environmental Science & Technology Letters, Journal Year: 2025, Volume and Issue: unknown

Published: March 18, 2025

Chemical pollution is one of the fastest-growing agents global change. Numerous pollutants are known to disrupt animal behavior, alter ecological interactions, and shift evolutionary trajectories. Crucially, both chemical individual organisms nonrandomly distributed throughout environment. Despite this fact, current evidence for chemical-induced impacts on wildlife largely stems from tests that restrict organism movement force homogeneous exposures. While such approaches have provided pivotal ecotoxicological insights, they overlook dynamic spatiotemporal interactions shape wildlife-pollution relationships in nature. Indeed, seemingly simple notion animals move environment creates a complex many which never been theoretically modeled or experimentally tested. Here, we conceptualize between variation highlight their implications. We propose three-pronged approach-integrating silico modeling, laboratory experiments allow movement, field-based tracking free-ranging animals-to bridge gap controlled studies real-world Advances telemetry, remote sensing, computational models provide necessary tools quantify these paving way new era ecotoxicology accounts complexity.

Language: Английский

Pharmaceutical pollution influences river-to-sea migration in Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar )

Science, Journal Year: 2025, Volume and Issue: 388(6743), P. 217 - 222

Published: April 10, 2025

Despite the growing threat of pharmaceutical pollution, we lack an understanding whether and how such pollutants influence animal behavior in wild. Using laboratory- field-based experiments across multiple years Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar ; n = 730), show that globally detected anxiolytic pollutant clobazam accumulates brain exposed fish influences river-to-sea migration success. Clobazam exposure increased speed with which passed through two hydropower dams along their route, resulting more clobazam-exposed reaching sea compared controls. We argue effects may arise from altered shoaling to clobazam. Drug-induced behavioral changes are expected have wide-ranging consequences for ecology evolution wild populations.

Language: Английский

A call for increased integration of experimental approaches in movement ecology

Biological reviews/Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Journal Year: 2025, Volume and Issue: unknown

Published: April 29, 2025

ABSTRACT Rapid developments in animal‐tracking technology have enabled major advances the field of movement ecology, which seeks to understand drivers and consequences across scales, taxa, ecosystems. The has made ground‐breaking discoveries, yet majority studies ecology remain reliant on observational approaches. While important, are limited compared experimental methods that can reveal causal relationships underlying mechanisms. As such, we advocate for a renewed focus approaches animal ecology. We illustrate way forward two fundamental levels biological organisation: individuals social groups. then explore application experiments study anthropogenic influences wildlife movement, enhance our mechanistic understanding conservation interventions. In each these examples, draw upon previous research effectively employed approaches, while highlighting outstanding questions could be answered by further experimentation. conclude ways manipulations both laboratory natural settings provide promising generate understandings drivers, consequences, movement.

Language: Английский