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Mercury is a potent neurotoxicant with well-documented effects on vertebrate behavior, although behavioral toxicity to invertebrates is understudied. Over a series of experiments, we assessed how a gradient of dietary methylmercury exposure influenced behavioral and physiological endpoints in dragonfly larvae, a widely used mercury biosentinel. Mercury exposure induced suboptimal behaviors in an artificially ideal trophic environment, suggesting potentially important impairments to prey detection and predator avoidance in larval dragonflies. For each doubling of dragonfly total mercury concentration, we estimated that dragonflies took 32 to 508\u2009s longer to initiate foraging behavior and were 3% to 18% more active when exposed to a predation cue (95% confidence intervals). Other behavioral endpoints were unaffected by mercury exposure, including prey capture rates, foraging efficiency, and refuge use under predatory threat. Physiological endpoints, including growth, body condition, molting, wingpad symmetry, and immune response, were similarly insensitive to mercury toxicity. These results help support the utility of dragonfly larvae to monitor mercury in freshwater food webs and confirm that quantifying behavioral toxicity is important to fully characterize and mitigate exposure risk.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/etojnl\/vgag083","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,9]],"date-time":"2026-04-09T17:54:24Z","timestamp":1775757264000},"page":"1581-1588","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Behavioral and physiological toxicity of dietary methylmercury exposure to larval dragonflies"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"45","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1642-2502","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Cailin A","family":"Sinclair","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Oregon State University , Corvallis, OR,","place":["United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Collin A","family":"Eagles-Smith","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey , Corvallis, OR,","place":["United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Rachel","family":"Vasta","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Integrative Biology, Oregon State University , Corvallis, OR,","place":["United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Colleen","family":"Flanagan Pritz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate, Air Resources Division, U.S. National Park Service , Denver, CO,","place":["United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Tiffany S","family":"Garcia","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Oregon State University , Corvallis, OR,","place":["United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"149","DOI":"10.1086\/419764https:\/\/about.jstor.org\/terms","article-title":"Adaptive intrinsic growth rates: An integration across taxa","volume":"72","author":"Arendt","year":"1997","journal-title":"The Quarterly Review of Biology"},{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"8982","DOI":"10.1021\/es201641x","article-title":"Laser ablation ICP-MS co-localization of mercury and immune response in fish","volume":"45","author":"Barst","year":"2011","journal-title":"Environmental Science & Technology"},{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.18637\/jss.v067.i01","article-title":"Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4","volume":"67","author":"Bates","year":"2015","journal-title":"Journal of Statistical Software"},{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"285","DOI":"10.1016\/S0269-7491(00)00038-5","article-title":"What do sentinels stand for?","volume":"112","author":"Beeby","year":"2001","journal-title":"Environmental Pollution"},{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3546","DOI":"10.1016\/j.envpol.2010.08.017","article-title":"Effects of mercury on behavior and performance of northern two-lined salamanders (Eurycea bislineata)","volume":"158","author":"Burke","year":"2010","journal-title":"Environmental Pollution"},{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"135117","DOI":"10.1016\/j.scitotenv.2019.135117","article-title":"Methylmercury exposure in wildlife: A review of the ecological and physiological processes affecting contaminant concentrations and their interpretation","volume":"711","author":"Ch\u00e9telat","year":"2020","journal-title":"The Science of the Total Environment"},{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B7","volume-title":"Dragonflies: Behavior and ecology of Odonata","author":"Corbet","year":"1999"},{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1605","DOI":"10.1890\/15-1964.1","article-title":"Predation risk increases immune response in a larval dragonfly (Leucorrhinia intacta)","volume":"97","author":"Duong","year":"2016","journal-title":"Ecology"},{"key":"2026061807035819800_vgag083-B9","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.5066\/P9TK6NPT","article-title":"Total mercury concentrations in dragonfly larvae from U.S. national parks (ver. 10.0, January 2025) [Data release]. 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