Abstract
IN aquatic environments, behaviour such as food finding, reproductive activities and orientation may depend on an organism's detection of specific chemical cues. One of the dangers of the increasing load of pollutants in the sea is that natural chemically mediated behaviour important in the lives of marine animals may be disrupted by minute amounts of these contaminants. This possibility has been suggested for chronic pollution by oil, whose sublethal effects are little known1. To examine quantitatively behavioural disruption by oils, we have investigated the effect of the seawater-soluble fraction of kerosene on the attraction of the marine prosobranch snail, Nassarius obsoletus, to food extracts. This snail has already been found to be quite suitable for studies of chemoreception2,3. Kerosene seawater extract was selected because its components have been identified and quantified and are also present in seawater extracts of some crude oils4.
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JACOBSON, S., BOYLAN, D. Effect of Seawater Soluble Fraction of Kerosene on Chemotaxis in a Marine Snail, Nassarius obsoletus. Nature 241, 213–215 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/241213a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/241213a0
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