Qualification of spontaneous undirected locomotor behavior of fish for sublethal toxicity testing. Part II. Variability of measurement parameters under toxicant‐induced stress

Spontaneous locomotor behavior of semiadult zebra fish (Brachydanio rerio) was recorded under sublethal short‐term exposure to the anionic technical surfactant, linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (C10–13‐LAS) and cadmium in single compound tests using an automated video‐monitoring and object‐tracing system. Vertical position and swimming velocity in the horizontal and vertical directions were used as behavioral measurement parameters. Data were analyzed by different statistical methods. In pairwise comparisons, consistent, statistically significant, and toxicant‐induced alterations of locomotor behavior were observed only for test concentrations, which also caused aspectoric symptoms of intoxication. This comparatively low sensitivity of the behavioral indication criteria was related to high variation in the measurement parameters and corresponding high, minimum detectable, statistically significant, and toxicant‐induced deviations. In contrast, results obtained by regression analysis showed significant trends in locomotor activity over the range of toxicant concentrations tested. Thus, our findings support the inappropriateness of no observed effect concentrations and the lowest observed effect concentrations as summary measures of toxicity and indicate that the regression analysis approach is superior to the analysis of variance approach.

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