Key Laboratory of Agrometeorology of Jiangsu Province, Department of Ecology, School of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology (NUIST), Nanjing 210044, China.
Department of Public Health, University of Naples Federico II, 80131 Naples, Italy.
J Hazard Mater. 2021 Sep 5;417:126035. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126035. Epub 2021 May 13.
Microplastics pollution is predicted to increase in the coming decades, raising concerns about its effects on living organisms. Although the effects of microplastics on individual organisms have been extensively studied, the effects on communities, biological diversity, and ecosystems remain underexplored. This paper reviews the published literature concerning how microplastics affect communities, biological diversity, and ecosystem processes. Microplastics increase the abundance of some taxa but decrease the abundance of some other taxa, indicating trade-offs among taxa and altered microbial community composition in both the natural environment and animals' gut. The alteration of community composition by microplastics is highly conserved across taxonomic ranks, while the alpha diversity of microbiota is often reduced or increased, depending on the microplastics dose and environmental conditions, suggesting potential threats to biodiversity. Biogeochemical cycles, greenhouse gas fluxes, and atmospheric chemistry, can also be altered by microplastics pollution. These findings suggest that microplastics may impact the U.N. Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) to improve atmospheric, soil, and water quality and sustaining biodiversity.
微塑料污染预计在未来几十年内增加，这引起了人们对其对生物的影响的担忧。尽管微塑料对单个生物的影响已经得到了广泛的研究，但对生物多样性、群落和生态系统的影响仍未得到充分探索。本文综述了关于微塑料如何影响群落、生物多样性和生态系统过程的文献。微塑料增加了一些类群的丰度，但降低了一些其他类群的丰度，这表明在自然环境和动物肠道中，不同类群之间存在权衡，微生物群落组成发生了改变。微塑料对群落组成的改变在分类等级上具有高度的保守性，而微生物群的 alpha 多样性则经常减少或增加，这取决于微塑料的剂量和环境条件，这表明可能对生物多样性构成威胁。微塑料污染还会改变生物地球化学循环、温室气体通量和大气化学。这些发现表明，微塑料可能会影响联合国可持续发展目标（SDGs），以改善大气、土壤和水质，维持生物多样性。
