Dr. Aneesh Bose joins us in this insightful episode to discuss the growing problem of pharmaceutical pollution and its potential impact on ecosystems worldwide. With pharmaceutical drugs increasingly detected in wildlife tissues, Dr. Bose highlights the urgent need to understand the effects of these pollutants on natural ecosystems.

This episode dives into Dr. Bose's innovative research involving larval odonates (dragonfly and damselfly nymphs). His team investigated the effects of exposure to two pharmaceuticals, cetirizine and citalopram, and their combination on predator-prey interactions.

Dr. Bose shares fascinating findings, which showed that exposure to both compounds increased dragonfly activity and influenced their predation success and efficiency in complex ways. He explains that while citalopram exposure reduced predation efficiency, cetirizine exposure led to diverse effects, enhancing predation success in some contexts but impairing it in others.

These findings emphasize the importance of examining the effects of pharmaceuticals in various contexts. Furthermore, Dr. Bose explains how such compounds can alter predator-prey outcomes, even at sublethal concentrations.

Tune in to learn more about this emerging environmental threat and how it can reshape our understanding of ecosystem dynamics.

Key Words: Pharmaceutical Pollution, Ecosystems, Predator-Prey Interactions, Odonate Nymphs, Cetirizine, Citalopram, Predation Efficiency, Sublethal Concentrations, Environmental Threat, Dragonflies, Damselflies.

Pharmaceutical pollution disrupts the behavior and predator-prey interactions of two widespread aquatic insects https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.105672