Populations of a cyprinid fish are self-sustaining despite widespread feminization of males

Abstract

These results demonstrate that roach populations living in some effluent-contaminated river stretches, where feminization is widespread, are self-sustaining. Although we found no evidence to suggest that exposure to estrogenic effluents is a significant driving factor in determining the size of roach breeding populations, a reduction in N(e) of up to 65% is still possible for the most contaminated sites because of the wide confidence intervals associated with the statistical model.