Fish fluoxetine reaction time

Fluoxetine is an antidepressant medicine causing relaxation and mood
improvement in people, with silencing certain personality traits in some
cases. The question arise if such phenomena can be observed in non-target
organisms like fish. Fluoxetine affects fishes behaviour, however, it is
not known if the medicine affects its “personality”. This study aimed to
evaluate the reaction of the invasive Neogobius fluviatilis and native
Gobio gobio individuals to fluoxetine at environmental concentration of
360 ng L-1. We prepared three variants of the experiments: (i) behavioural
trials with unexposed fishes; (ii) behavioural trials with the same fishes
after 21-day of fluoxetine exposure; (iii) behavioural trials with the
same fishes after 21-day depuration period i.e. without fluoxetine. The
fishes reaction time (RT) i.e. difference in time spent on reaching food
with and without the necessity of overcoming the obstacle was analysed.
Additionally, the personality: bold or shy, traits of each fish
individual, was assigned. The results indicated that environmental
concentrations of the antidepressant influenced RT. The average RT of the
fishes cultured with fluoxetine was by 7 min shorter in comparison to the
non- exposed control. Share of individuals exposed to fluoxetine assigned
as bold raised to 71.4% in comparison to 46.4% in non-exposed control.
This sheds new light on wild fishes behaviour caught from freshwater.
Environmental concentrations of the antidepressant influenced the time of
fishes reaction and share individuals assigned as bold. Moreover, 21 day
recovery lasting might be not enough to get fluoxetine effect on fishes.