Poster Presentation Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Australasia 2021

Frontiers in quantifying wildlife behavioural responses to chemical pollution (#170)

Michael G Bertram 1 , Jake M Martin 2 , Erin S McCallum 1 , Lesley A Alton 2 , Jack A Brand 2 , Bryan W Brooks 3 4 , Daniel Cerveny 1 5 , Jerker Fick 6 , Alex T Ford 7 , Gustav Hellström 1 , Marcus Michelangeli 8 , Shinichi Nakagawa 9 , Giovanni Polverino 10 , Minna Saaristo 11 , Andrew Sih 8 , Hung Tan 2 , Charles R Tyler 12 , Bob BM Wong 2 , Tomas Brodin 1
  1. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, VäSTERBOTTEN, Sweden
  2. Monash University, Melbourne, VICTORIA, Australia
  3. Department of Environmental Science, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, United States
  4. School of Environment, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
  5. Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses, University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice, Vodňany, South Bohemia, Czech Republic
  6. Department of Chemistry, Umeå University, Umeå, Västerbotten, Sweden
  7. Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, United Kingdom
  8. University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States
  9. School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  10. Centre for Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
  11. The Environment Protection Authority Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  12. Biosciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom

Animal behaviour is remarkably sensitive to disruption by chemical pollution, with widespread implications for ecological and evolutionary processes in contaminated wildlife populations. However, conventional approaches applied to study impacts of chemical pollutants on wildlife behaviour seldom address the complexity of natural environments in which contamination occurs. The aim of this review is to guide the rapidly developing field of behavioural ecotoxicology towards increased environmental realism, ecological complexity, and mechanistic understanding. We identify research areas in ecology that have been largely overlooked within behavioural ecotoxicology to date but which promise to yield valuable insights, including within- and among-individual variation, social networks and collective behaviour, and multi-stressor interactions. Further, we feature methodological and technological innovations that enable the collection of data on contaminant-induced behavioural changes at an unprecedented resolution and scale in the lab and the field. In an era of rapid environmental change, there is an urgent need to advance our understanding of the real-world impacts of chemical pollution on wildlife behaviour. This review therefore provides a roadmap of the major outstanding questions in behavioural ecotoxicology and highlights the need for increased cross-talk with other disciplines in order to find the answers.