By Janet Raloff
From New Orleans, La., at the E.Hormone 2002 meeting
The widely used herbicide atrazine can convert male frogs into hermaphrodites (SN: 11/02/02, p. 275: More Frog Trouble: Herbicides may emasculate wild males). But what happens when a naturally hermaphroditic species, such as the mangrove killifish, encounters this weed killer?
The hermaphrodites can change into females, new data show.
William P. Davis of the Environmental Protection Agency in Gulf Breeze, Fla., and his colleagues put killifish hatchlings in water with atrazine at a concentration of 16 or 33 parts per million for just 5 hours, then raised the fish until they laid eggs.