A novel approach for the assessment of invertebrate behavior and its use in behavioral ecotoxicology

Sublethal effects are becoming more relevant in ecotoxicological test methods due to their higher sensitivity compared to lethal endpoints and their preventive nature. Such a promising sublethal endpoint is the movement behavior of invertebrates which is associated with the direct maintenance of various ecosystem processes, hence being of special interest for ecotoxicology. Disturbed movement behavior is often related to neurotoxicity and can affect drift, mate-finding, predator avoidance, and therefore population dynamics. We show the practical implementation of the ToxmateLab, a new device that allows monitoring the movement behavior of up to 48 organisms simultaneously, for behavioral ecotoxicology. We quantified behavioral reactions of Gammarus pulex (Amphipoda, Crustacea) after exposure to two pesticides (dichlorvos and methiocarb) and two pharmaceuticals (diazepam and ibuprofen) at sublethal, environmentally relevant concentrations. We simulated a short-term pulse contamination event that lasted 90 min. Within this short test period, we successfully identified behavioral patterns that were most pronounced upon exposure to the two pesticides: Methiocarb initially triggered hyperactivity, after which baseline behavior was restored. On the other hand, dichlorvos induced hypoactivity starting at a moderate concentration of 5 μg/L – a pattern we also found at the highest concentration of ibuprofen (10 μg/L). An additional acetylcholine esterase inhibition assay revealed no significant impact of the enzyme activity that would explain the altered movement behavior. This suggests that in environmentally realistic scenarios chemicals can induce stress – apart from mode-of-action – that affects non-target organisms' behavior. Overall, our study proves the practical applicability of empirical behavioral ecotoxicological approaches and thus represents a next step towards routine practical use.