The Impact of Different Drugs on Daphnias Capacity to Survive, Growth, and Reproduce

Abstract

Abstract: There may be drugs in many of the world's surface waters, but not much is known about how these chemicals affect aquatic life. We used Daphnia magna, a common species of freshwater zooplankton, to test how dangerous single drugs and drug combinations are in water. During both the short-term and long-term pharmacological bioassays, we looked at the life span, appearance, size, number of eggs laid at rest, number of offspring, and percentage of males in the population. We also looked at the rates of death among newborns. The acute stage only lasted six days, but the chronic stage lasted thirty (sex ratio). The Daphnia with a single drug at concentrations ranging from 1 to 100 lg/l didn't change how the organism normally worked. When clofibric acid was given to Daphnia at a concentration of 10 lg/l, their ability to reproduce was much better than when they were given fluoxetine at a concentration of 36 lg/l. Both of these outcomes were better than expected. When fluoxetine at 36 lg/l and clofibric acid at 100 lg/l were given together, they killed a lot of people. When the same dose of fluoxetine was mixed with 10 lg/l of clofibric acid, it caused the carapaces to be misshapen and the setae to move around. The number of males to females in a Daphnia culture changed after it was given three to five antibiotics at doses between 30 and 500 lg/l.