Meeting Abstract
Crayfish are polytrophic meaning that they feed on and become prey for all levels of the aquatic food web as well as, being important for the transfer of energy between benthic and terrestrial food webs. Because crayfish are a keystone species, it is important to investigate any factors that may affect their population size. Crayfish are active at night and rely heavily on their sensory appendages (e.g. antennulues, maxillipeds and pereopods) in order to localize food sources. We have previously shown that herbicide exposure affects localization of female odors by male crayfish. In this experiment, we wanted to examine if changes in chemoreception following herbicide exposure extended to other odorants. We exposed male and female crayfish to environmentally relevant, sublethal levels of atrazine (80 ppb) for 72 hours and then examined the behavioral responses of both atrazine-treated and control crayfish to food odor delivered from one end of a test arena. We measured odor localization and locomotory behaviors of crayfish in response to food (fish) odor. We found that control crayfish spent more time in the proximal region of the test arena and at the odor source when compared to atrazine-treated crayfish. Further, there were no differences in the time spent moving and not moving, total distance travelled in the tank and walking speed (cm/s) when control and atrazine-treated crayfish were compared. Overall, this indicates that acute atrazine exposure alters chemosensory abilities of crayfish while overall motor function remains unchanged.
