Assessing Pyrene Impact on Precopulatory Behaviour: A Cost-effective Time-to-Event Experiment with Parhyale hawaiensis v1

Understanding the impact of environmental contaminants on chemosensation is crucial for assessing the ecological fitness of aquatic organisms. Here, we present a step-by-step protocol for investigating the chemosensory responses of Parhyale hawaiensis to precopulatory activity following exposure to Pyrene (Pyr), a model polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH). We use a time-to-event experimental design to assess the organism's response time to its mating partner in a 70ml petri dish setup under different exposure conditions. This protocol offers a simple approach for conducting cost-effective behavioural ecotoxicology and contributes to our understanding of the interactive effects of contaminants on aquatic organisms.