Turning microplastics into nanoplastics through digestive fragmentation by Antarctic krill
Open Access
- 8 March 2018
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Communications
- Vol. 9 (1), 1-8
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03465-9
Abstract
Microplastics (plastics Euphausia superba) to microplastics under acute static renewal conditions, we present evidence of physical size alteration of microplastics ingested by a planktonic crustacean. Ingested microplastics (31.5 µm) are fragmented into pieces less than 1 µm in diameter. Previous feeding studies have shown spherical microplastics either; pass unaffected through an organism and are excreted, or are sufficiently small for translocation to occur. We identify a new pathway; microplastics are fragmented into sizes small enough to cross physical barriers, or are egested as a mixture of triturated particles. These findings suggest that current laboratory-based feeding studies may be oversimplifying interactions between zooplankton and microplastics but also introduces a new role of Antarctic krill, and potentially other species, in the biogeochemical cycling and fate of plastic.This publication has 51 references indexed in Scilit:
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