Behaviour and evolutionary responses to pharmaceutical pollution

Drugs used in human and veterinary medicine enter the environment and pose a serious threat to wildlife. This Project aims to uncover how one such ubiquitous pharmaceutical pollutant - fluoxetine, known as Prozac - alters the course of reproduction and sexual selection in a freshwater fish. It will integrate morphological, behavioural, and experimental evolution approaches to yield insights into how fluoxetine affects sexual traits and behaviours - and how this in turn can impact offspring viability and the evolutionary process. Findings will add significantly to our understanding of how species respond to rapidly changing environments, with consequences for the persistence of populations and the survival of species in the wild.