Drugs in our waterways: nature's high?
July 16, 2026
from 6 p.m.
Ruzante Theatre
riviera Tito Livio, 45 - Padua
Galilean School of Higher Education of the University of Padua
The Galilean School of Higher Education of the University of Padua invites to the conference of Bob Wong (Monash University, Australia) on the presence of drugs in our waterways.
Introduced by: Gianguido Dall'Agata, director of the Galilean School of Higher Education, and Gil Guastoni Rosenthal, Department of Biology of the University of Padua.
Humans have brought about unprecedented changes to environments everywhere. Vast quantities of pharmaceutical drugs are taken by humans, and due to inadequate removal during wastewater treatment, make their way into rivers, lakes, and even drinking water. How do drugs in the environment affect the health of wildlife, the complex interdependencies within ecological communities, and the biodiversity of our planet? Using poecilid fishes as models, this talk will outline long-term research investigating the impacts of pharmaceutical pollution on the behaviour of exposed organisms and their ecological and evolutionary consequences.
Bob Wong is a Professor of behavioral and evolutionary ecology based in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, Australia. Bob received his PhD from the Australian National University and undertook postdoctoral fellowships at Boston University and the University of Helsinki before joining Monash. Research in Bob’s group focuses on how human-induced environmental change affects wildlife behavior, ecology and evolution.