About This Project

Fish are sensitive to changes in water quality and exhibit behavioral changes when exposed to contaminated water. Zebrafish, Danio rerio, are a commonly used model species due to some similarities to mammals, well-documented behavior, and easy maintenance. This project proposes to use D. rerio as an animal model to find behaviors associated with water contamination, such as changes in swimming behavior. These behaviors will provide a more biologically relevant way to analyze water.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

A recent update to the Official Mexican Standard (NOM)-127, which regulates water quality in Mexico, now requires biological context for water sources. When examining environmental conditions, behavior is an effective indicator that can link ecology with physiology (Chon et al., 2009; Xiao et al., 2015). Fish are very sensitive to water contamination and can exhibit behavioral changes when exposed to small amounts of contaminants (Gauthier & Vijayan, 2020). Using fish behavior for environmental assessment allows for direct and continuous measurements to contaminants that are not detected with the use of physiochemical monitoring systems alone (Van der Schalie et al., 2001).

What is the significance of this project?

Animal models have been used before in ecotoxicology studies to examine the effect of water quality. The problem with this traditional toxicological approach is that the desired behavior is often death or acute toxicity after a set exposure period (Banerjee et al., 2023). Fish are extremely sensitive to small changes in water quality. Despite this, very little effort has been made into exploring the immediate effects (within several minutes) of contamination. A list of specific, immediate behaviors associated with contamination would be a start in filling this knowledge gap. This study aims to document immediate changes in behavior when exposed to contaminated water, rather waiting for serious bodily harm or death to occur to draw conclusions about the state of the water.

What are the goals of the project?

There are two main goals of this project.

First, is to create a list of specific behaviors, called an ethogram, associated with contamination exposure. To do this we will film our fish in clean water and synthetic wastewater. The synthetic water is water created in our lab made to mimic the water contamination found in the local area. Using behavioral software, we will analyze the videos to identify behaviors associated with water contamination exposure.

Second, is to use the identified behavior to assess real water samples obtained from sources with known contamination in the local area. The ultimate goal is to provide results that give the Mexican government biological context to the current state of their water.