Pesticide freshwater fish sensitivity

Studies investigating the effects of pesticides on crustaceans should be of high priority. Crustaceans are very important consumers and prey in various aquatic systems and there are delicate relationships between crustacean plankton prey and fish predators in the pelagic zone that can and have been shown to be disturbed. It is known that pesticides are present in surface waters and it is especially urgent to study the effects of insecticides on freshwater species and species that are present in estuaries and coastal waters with high risks of contamination due to vicinity to the sources. In acute toxicity tests crustaceans were much more (often 10-times more) sensitive to insecticides than fish (Maltby et al. 2005), and some of the chemicals probably affect behaviors at very low concentrations. As there are very few studies done on pesticide effects on crustacean chemoreception it is not possible to compare their sensitivity with fish, but it is likely that there are differences. The few crustaceans studied concerning effects of copper indicate that they are less sensitive to the metal compared with fish. 

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