Despite the growing threat of pharmaceutical pollution, we lack an understanding of whether and how such pollutants influence animal behavior in the wild. Using laboratory- and field-based experiments across multiple years in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar; n = 730), we show that the globally detected anxiolytic pollutant clobazam accumulates in the brain of exposed fish and influences river-to-sea migration success. Clobazam exposure increased the speed with which fish passed through two hydropower dams along their migration route, resulting in more clobazam-exposed fish reaching the sea compared with controls. We argue that such effects may arise from altered shoaling behavior in fish exposed to clobazam. Drug-induced behavioral changes are expected to have wide-ranging consequences for the ecology and evolution of wild populations.

Australian Rivers Institute Griffith University Nathan Queensland Australia

Behavioral Evolution Research Group Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior Konstanz Germany

Department of Chemistry Umeå University Umeå Sweden

Department of Wildlife Fish and Environmental Studies Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Umeå Sweden

Department of Zoology Stockholm University Stockholm Sweden

Institute of Zoology Zoological Society of London London United Kingdom

Laboratory of Adaptive Biodynamics Research Unit of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology Institute of Life Earth and Environment University of Namur Namur Belgium

River Ecology and Management Research Group RivEM Department of Environmental and Life Sciences Karlstad University Karlstad Sweden

School of Biological Sciences Monash University Clayton Victoria Australia

School of Life and Environmental Sciences Deakin University Waurn Ponds Australia

TRANSfarm Science Engineering and Technology Group KU Leuven Lovenjoel Belgium

University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses Vodnany Czech Republic

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