Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e del Mare, DiSTeM, Università degli Studi di Palermo Ed. 16, 90128, Palermo, Italy; National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics - OGS, via A. Piccard 54, 34151, Trieste, Italy.
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Department of Integrative Marine Ecology (EMI), Sicily Marine Centre, Lungomare Cristoforo Colombo (complesso Roosevelt), 90149, Palermo, Italy.
Environ Pollut. 2021 Sep 15;285:117174. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.117174. Epub 2021 Apr 27.
Microplastics are widespread in the aquatic environment and thus available for many organisms at different trophic levels. Many scientific papers focus their attention on the study of the effects of microplastics on different species at individual level. Here we performed a global scale meta-analysis focusing our work on the study of the effect of microplastics on the functional traits of aquatic benthic organisms. Overall, microplastics showed a moderate negative effect on the examined functional traits of benthic organisms. Our results show that some crucial functional traits, such as those linked to behaviour and feeding, appear to be unaffected by microplastics. In contrast, traits related to the capacity of organisms to assimilate energy are affected. Moreover, traits with possible effects at population level appear to be negatively affected by microplastics. We discuss how the direct impact of organismal performance may have indirect repercussions at higher levels in the ecological hierarchy and represent a risk for the stability and functioning of the ecosystem.
微塑料广泛存在于水生环境中，因此可供许多处于不同营养级的生物利用。许多科学论文都将注意力集中在研究微塑料对不同物种个体水平的影响上。在这里，我们进行了一项全球范围的荟萃分析，重点研究微塑料对底栖水生生物功能特征的影响。总体而言，微塑料对底栖生物的被检测功能特征表现出中等程度的负面影响。我们的研究结果表明，一些关键的功能特征，如与行为和摄食相关的特征，似乎不受微塑料的影响。相比之下，与生物体同化能量能力相关的特征则受到影响。此外，可能对种群水平产生影响的特征似乎也受到微塑料的负面影响。我们讨论了生物体表现的直接影响如何在生态系统层次结构的更高层次上产生间接影响，并对生态系统的稳定性和功能构成风险。
