Finding the missing piece of the aquatic plastic pollution puzzle: Interaction between primary producers and microplastics
By Kiyoko Yokota, H. Waterfield, C. Hastings, E. Davidson, Edward Kwietniewski, B. Wells. 2017
208 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Mounting evidence of global plastic pollution has prompted many studies of its potential effects on aquatic ecosystems. In particular, most research has focused on organismal responses to microplastics and the effects of microplastics when introduced as food. However, there has been far less research into the possible effects of microplastics on primary producers. In this review, we document the available evidence for possible effects from the literature and from a laboratory experiment using cyanobacteria and microplastic fragments. Our review shows that primary producer–microplastic interactions can alter algal photosynthesis, growth, gene expression, and colony size and morphology, possibly via adhesion and/or transfer of adsorbed pollutants from microplastics; and, these effects could be transferred up the food web, including to humans. We recommend that the effects of microplastics on primary producers be incorporated into microplastic research to better understand its full effects on freshwater and marine ecosystems.
Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8b28c0b60ef3a1c6b35637cec4f2e202b8567170
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In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
In Pollution
Citations in the corpus
- Feasting on microplastics: ingestion by and effects on marine organisms (2018, background): “…may increase the sinking and sedimentation rates of the plastic microdebris, the chlorophyll concentration, photosynthesis, cell population growth, gene expression, colony size and morphology of phytoplankton could be drastically altered by microplastic aggregation (Yokota et al. 2017).”
- Understanding How Microplastics Affect Marine Biota on the Cellular Level Is Important for Assessing Ecosystem Function: A Review (2019, background): “Such results address the significance of primary producers interacting with microplastic (Yokota et al. 2017).”