Date of Submission

Spring 2019

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Biology

Project Advisor 1

Gabriel Perron

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Antibiotics are a vital component of human medicine and one of the most frequently prescribed medications. Antibiotics are also now commonly used in agriculture and aquaculture. As a result, there is an increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance as well as an increased presence of antibiotic waste in the environment. There is a general lack of knowledge regarding the effects of the increased antibiotic usage, resistance, and pollution. Zebrafish serve as a useful model organism to research the effects of aquatic pollution. Specifically, zebrafish are used to study the impacts of chemical pollutants on reproductive success. However, there is a gap even within this research and there are limited studies that have investigated the effects of residual antibiotics on reproduction in aquatic organisms. To determine whether an acute exposure of low-dose antibiotic had an effect on reproductive success, a zebrafish mating pair was exposed to 0.1μg/mL of streptomycin for 14 hours before matings and then during the mating process. We observed that the exposure to streptomycin led to an immediate decrease in the total number of eggs produced and the percentage of viable eggs. Furthermore, the effects of the acute exposure of streptomycin on the reproduction in zebrafish were seemingly temporary, as we observed a restoration in the total number of eggs produced after 18 days of no breeding and no antibiotic exposure. Overall, the results provide important information regarding the negative effects on the number of eggs produced, the viability of eggs, embryo survival, and the hatching rate following a low dose exposure to streptomycin in the aquatic environment.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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