For decades, we have known that chemicals affect human and wildlife behavior. Moreover, due to recent technological and computational advances, scientists are now increasingly aware that a wide variety of contaminants and other environmental stressors adversely affect organismal behavior and subsequent ecological outcomes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. There is also a groundswell of concern that regulatory ecotoxicology does not adequately consider behavior, primarily due to a lack of standardized toxicity methods. This has, in turn, led to the exclusion of many behavioral ecotoxicology studies from chemical risk assessments. To improve understanding of the challenges and opportunities for behavioral ecotoxicology within regulatory toxicology/risk assessment, a unique workshop with international representatives from the fields of behavioral ecology, ecotoxicology, regulatory (eco)toxicology, neurotoxicology, test standardization, and risk assessment resulted in the formation of consensus perspectives and recommendations, which promise to serve as a roadmap to advance interfaces among the basic and translational sciences, and regulatory practices.

Animal behaviour is remarkably sensitive to disruption by chemical pollution, with widespread implications for ecological and evolutionary processes in contaminated wildlife populations. However, conventional approaches applied to study the impacts of chemical pollutants on wildlife behaviour seldom address the complexity of natural environments in which contamination occurs. The aim of this review is to guide the rapidly developing field of behavioural ecotoxicology towards increased environmental realism, ecological complexity, and mechanistic understanding. We identify research areas in ecology that to date have been largely overlooked within behavioural ecotoxicology but which promise to yield valuable insights, including within‐ and among‐individual variation, social networks and collective behaviour, and multi‐stressor interactions. Further, we feature methodological and technological innovations that enable the collection of data on pollutant‐induced behavioural changes at an unprecedented resolution and scale in the laboratory and the field. In an era of rapid environmental change, there is an urgent need to advance our understanding of the real‐world impacts of chemical pollution on wildlife behaviour. This review therefore provides a roadmap of the major outstanding questions in behavioural ecotoxicology and highlights the need for increased cross‐talk with other disciplines in order to find the answers.

In the past decade, there have been increasing concerns over the effects of pharmaceutical compounds in the aquatic environment, however very little is known about the effects of antidepressants such as the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Many biological functions within invertebrates are under the control of serotonin, such as reproduction, metabolism, moulting and behaviour. The effects of serotonin and fluoxetine have recently been shown to alter the behaviour of the marine amphipod, Echinogammarus marinus (Leach, 1815). The purpose of this study was to observe behavioural and transcriptional modifications in this crustacean exposed to the two most prescribed SSRIs (fluoxetine and sertraline) and to develop biomarkers of neurological endocrine disruption. The animals were exposed to both drugs at environmentally relevant concentrations from 0.001 to 1μg/L during short-term (1h and 1day) and medium-term (8 days) experiments. The movement of the amphipods was tracked using the behavioural analysis software during 12min alternating dark/light conditions. The behavioural analysis revealed a significant effect on velocity which was observed after 1h exposure to sertraline at 0.01μg/L and after 1 day exposure to fluoxetine as low as 0.001μg/L. The most predominant effect of drugs on velocity was recorded after 1 day exposure for the 0.1 and 0.01μg/L concentrations of fluoxetine and sertraline, respectively. Subsequently, the expression (in this article gene expression is taken to represent only transcription, although it is acknowledged that gene expression can also be regulated at translation, mRNA and protein stability levels) of several E. marinus neurological genes, potentially involved in the serotonin metabolic pathway or behaviour regulation, were analysed in animals exposed to various SSRIs concentrations using RT-qPCR. The expression of a tryptophan hydroxylase (Ph), a neurocan core protein (Neuc), a Rhodopsin (Rhod1) and an Arrestin (Arr) were measured following exposure to fluoxetine or sertraline for 8 days. The levels of Neuc, Rhod1 and Arr were significantly down-regulated to approximately 0.5-, 0.29- and 0.46-fold, respectively, for the lower concentrations of fluoxetine suggesting potential changes in the phototransduction pathway. The expression of Rhod1 tended to be up-regulated for the lower concentration of sertraline but not significantly. In summary, fluoxetine and sertraline have a significant impact on the behaviour and neurophysiology of this amphipod at environmentally relevant concentrations with effects observed after relatively short periods of time.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals have been established to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals will require a healthy and productive environment. An understanding of the impacts of chemicals which can negatively impact environmental health is therefore essential to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, current research on and regulation of chemicals in the environment tend to take a simplistic view and do not account for the complexity of the real world, which inhibits the way we manage chemicals. There is therefore an urgent need for a step change in the way we study and communicate the impacts and control of chemicals in the natural environment. To do this requires the major research questions to be identified so that resources are focused on questions that really matter. We present the findings of a horizon‐scanning exercise to identify research priorities of the European environmental science community around chemicals in the environment. Using the key questions approach, we identified 22 questions of priority. These questions covered overarching questions about which chemicals we should be most concerned about and where, impacts of global megatrends, protection goals, and sustainability of chemicals; the development and parameterization of assessment and management frameworks; and mechanisms to maximize the impact of the research. The research questions identified provide a first‐step in the path forward for the research, regulatory, and business communities to better assess and manage chemicals in the natural environment. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;9999:1–15. © 2018 SETAC