Behavioral and toxic effects of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiacloprid in the planarian Girardia dorotocephala.

Neonicotinoids were developed in the 1990s and are among the most popular pesticides worldwide. However, a significant fraction of neonicotinoids end up in freshwater, affecting non-target organisms, including planarians, a type of free-living flatworm. In this work, we explored the effect of the neonicotinoid thiacloprid on planarian behavior. Thiacloprid decreased planarian motility reversibly and increased seizure-like movements (paroxysm-like movements different from the normal gliding behavior of the worms) in a concentration-dependent manner but did not influence planarian environmental light/dark preference at sub-µM concentrations. Exposure to up to 10µM thiacloprid for 24hours did not cause lethality but markedly decreased motility and caused a concentration-dependent incidence of a "wrinkled" morphology at rest. The quantification of thiacloprid's behavioral effects reported in the present work allows us to suggest strategies for screening possible alleviators of neonicotinoid effects in planarians and potentially other non-target species. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the effect of thiacloprid on planarians.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology

• Publication date

  2025-09-09

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.etap.2025.104816PMID 40934998
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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