Poeta Gianluca, Fanelli Giuliano, Pietrelli Loris, Acosta Alicia T R, Battisti Corrado
Dipartimento di Scienze, Università degli studi Roma Tre, viale Marconi, 446, 00146, Rome, Italy.
Dipartimento di Biologia, Seconda Università di Roma Tor Vergata, via della Ricerca Scientifica, 00133, Rome, Italy.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2017 Apr;24(12):11856-11859. doi: 10.1007/s11356-017-8887-7. Epub 2017 Mar 29.
Among the many threats that can be recorded on sandy beaches, plastic litter represents a serious problem for these complex and endangered ecosystems. Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is increasingly abundant as a form of plastic litter in natural environments, particularly along shores and waterways. Nevertheless, despite the great number of scientific articles concerning the impact of litter on animal species, there are still no research focusing on the interaction between this type of beach litter and other biodiversity components. In this work, we reported the first evidence of interactions between EPS and living plants along a sandy beach of Tyrrhenian central Italy. We sampled 540 EPS items, mainly deriving from fishery activities (>75%). We obtained evidence for an interaction between EPS and plants: about 5% of items resulted perforated or have roots of three species (Phragmites australis, Spartina versicolor, Anthemis maritima). Apparently, we did not observed a relationship between plants and EPS items size. More research is needed to assess if the plant assemblage growing on EPS is random or if peculiar substrate exerts some sort of selection on the plant community.
在沙滩上能够被记录下来的众多威胁中，塑料垃圾对这些复杂且濒危的生态系统而言是个严重问题。发泡聚苯乙烯（EPS）作为一种塑料垃圾，在自然环境中越来越常见，尤其是在海岸和水道沿线。然而，尽管有大量关于垃圾对动物物种影响的科学文章，但仍没有研究聚焦于这类海滩垃圾与其他生物多样性组成部分之间的相互作用。在这项研究中，我们报告了意大利第勒尼安海中部一个沙滩上EPS与活体植物之间相互作用的首个证据。我们对540个EPS物品进行了采样，这些物品主要源自渔业活动（超过75%）。我们获得了EPS与植物之间存在相互作用的证据：约5%的物品有穿孔或有三种植物（芦苇、互花米草、滨小蓟）的根系。显然，我们没有观察到植物与EPS物品大小之间存在关联。需要开展更多研究来评估生长在EPS上的植物组合是随机的，还是这种特殊基质对植物群落施加了某种选择作用。
