Exposure to Sublethal Concentrations of Lead (Pb) Affects Ecologically Relevant Behaviors in House Sparrows (Passer domesticus)

Arch Environ Contam Toxicol. 2024 Apr 10. doi: 10.1007/s00244-024-01062-0. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTGlobal contamination of environments with lead (Pb) poses threats to many ecosystems and populations. While exposure to Pb is toxic at high concentrations, recent literature has shown that lower concentrations can also cause sublethal, deleterious effects. However, there remains relatively little causal investigation of how exposure to lower concentrations of environmental Pb affects ecologically important behaviors. Behaviors often represent first-line responses of an organism and its internal physiological, molecular, and genetic responses to a changing environment. Hence, better understanding how behaviors are influenced by pollutants such as Pb generates crucial information on how species are coping with the effects of pollution more broadly. To better understand the effects of sublethal Pb on behavior, we chronically exposed adult wild-caught, captive house sparrows (Passer domesticus) to Pb-exposed drinking water and quantified a suite of behavioral outcomes: takeoff flight performance, activity in a novel environment, and in-hand struggling and breathing rate while being handled by an experimenter. Compared to controls (un-exposed drinking water), sparrows exposed to environmentally relevant concentrations of Pb exhibited decreases in takeoff flight performance and reduced movements in a novel environment following 9-10 weeks of exposure. We interpret this suite of ...
Source: Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Source Type: research