Impacts of an anxiolytic drug on fish behaviour and habitat use in a natural landscape

Pharmaceutical contaminants reaching natural aquatic ecosystems can affect fish behaviour, modifying activity patterns, foraging behaviour, and antipredator responses. While laboratory-based studies can offer key insights, assessing the ecological relevance of these findings requires field-based approaches. Therefore, we examined the effects of oxazepam, a widely prescribed anxiolytic drug, on the behaviour of a cyprinid fish (the common roach, Rutilus rutilus) in the wild, combining slow-release exposure implants with continuous tracking via acoustic telemetry. To add ecological realism, we created a landscape of fear with an uneven distribution of resources (macrophytes) and exposure to predators (pike, Esox lucius), additionally testing the effects of the drug on roach habitat selection and predator-prey interactions. Fish exposed to the drug showed an increased swimming activity and speed, but exhibited a more constrained spatial distribution in the pond, favoring areas with higher ..., , , # Impacts of an anxiolytic drug on fish behaviour and habitat use in a natural landscape

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.c2fqz61mh](10.5061/dryad.c2fqz61mh)

## Description of the data and file structure

The IPonds-Landscape of fear project is a repository for the data and code used in the manuscript titled: \"Impacts of an anxiolytic drug on fish behaviour and habitat use in a natural landscape\".

The project has two components: \"Data\" and \"Scripts\". Data contains the main datasets needed to run the code scripts provided in the folder called Scripts.

Both components are organized by analyses according to the sections provided in the manuscript: Filtering, Activity, Home range, Behavioral states, habitat selection, and predator-prey interactions.

The code provided is fully annotated.

### Files and variables

#### File: R_scripts.zip

**Description:** The compresed file contains a folder with six quarto files fully annotated. Each file (.QMD) contains the code used to conduct the analyse...,