About This Project

We will explore how low-level steroid exposure can have long-term, population-scale consequences for aquatic ecosystems. We will address this question by quantifying how exposure of female freshwater snails to potent steroid pharmaceuticals affects reproduction in the offspring of the exposed snails. This research will benefit society by illuminating under-appreciated yet important consequences of steroid exposure for aquatic organisms.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Low-level environmental exposures to steroidal pharmaceuticals is likely inevitable for aquatic organisms. While it is clear that these chemicals affect directly exposed organisms, how the offspring of these organisms are themselves affected is unknown.

How these '"transgenerational" effects cascade from parent to offspring is a critical step towards understanding and mitigating the negative consequences of environmental pollution.

What is the significance of this project?

Transgenerational effects of steroid exposure will have population-level consequences for food webs, ecosystem function, and possibly, human health. Despite the certain occurrence of steroid pharmaceuticals in the environment, limited to no data exist regarding how exposure of parents to these chemicals influences later generations - even if exposures are limited to only one generation.

Our research will help to address this critical knowledge gap by using a powerful and appropriate freshwater snail model system to evaluate whether and to what extent parental steroid exposure influences reproductive health in offspring.

What are the goals of the project?

Our immediate goal is to quantify, via standard assays of reproductive activity, how steroid hormone exposure influences reproduction in the offspring of exposed individuals. We will assay both androgenic and estrogenic steroids that are commonly used in industry and agriculture.