Work

Environmental chemicals cause changes in animal personality that can destabilize populations

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Life is shaped by its chemical environment. An animal’s personality, for example, can be developmentally altered by foreign chemicals. We produced a data-based model to study how contaminant-mediated changes in personality affect predator and prey abundances. Increasing contaminant concentrations led to a greater proportion of bold vs. shy phenotypes in offspring, which shifted predator-prey populations from stable coexistence to periodic dynamics with large oscillations. The addition of a secondary stressor, which reflects a multi-stressor environment, led to a biphasic response in predator populations. A modest increase in boldness improved predator survival rates, while a more drastic increase, one consistent with the experimental data, led to a greater risk of extinction. This study indicates that subtle neurophysiological alterations from exposure to diverse and common environmental chemicals may have cascading effects that challenge ecosystem stability.

Source: Scientific Reports

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-76089-5