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Supplementary material from "Intraspecific behavioural and environmental contexts influence collective risk of microplastic ingestion in a social fish"
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Researchers tested European minnows in controlled groups and found that dominant individuals ingested more microplastics than subordinates regardless of water flow, but that flowing water — while reducing total ingestion — intensified dominant fish disproportionate exposure, suggesting that competitive advantage can become an evolutionary trap in polluted environments.
Plastic pollution is a growing ecological threat, yet the behavioural and social factors influencing susceptibility to microplastic ingestion remain poorly understood, particularly under varying environmental conditions. We tested how social dominance, group dominance structure, and water flow interact to shape microplastic ingestion in a group-living freshwater fish, the European minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus). Capture, ingestion, retention, and swallowing of food pellets and weathered microplastics by individuals within social groups in static and flowing water were quantified in a controlled experiment. The results showed that dominant individuals consistently captured and ingested more microplastics than subordinates in both flow regimes, but swallowing rates increased with dominance rank only in flowing water, suggesting that environmental factors can modulate rank-related asymmetries in microplastic exposure. Groups with steeper dominance hierarchies did not ingest more microplastics overall, but instead rejected them more frequently, indicating enhanced collective discrimination in groups with more defined dominance structures, despite higher ingestion rates by dominants. Flowing water reduced total microplastic ingestion across individuals and groups, likely due to the transient availability of items, yet also intensified the disproportionate exposure of dominants. These findings show that abiotic and social contexts jointly influence microplastic exposure risk, and that in polluted environments, traits that normally confer a competitive advantage may instead create a socially mediated evolutionary trap.
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Supplementary material from "Intraspecific behavioural and environmental contexts influence collective risk of microplastic ingestion in a social fish"
AI summary Read the abstract
Researchers exposed groups of European minnows with varying social dominance structures to microplastic pellets under different flow conditions, finding that subordinate fish and low-flow environments significantly elevated ingestion risk, demonstrating that social hierarchies and hydrodynamics interact to shape collective microplastic exposure.
Supplementary Material from Intraspecific behavioural and environmental contexts influence collective risk of microplastic ingestion in a social fish
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Researchers provide supplementary data tables and figures for a controlled experiment examining how social dominance rank and water flow conditions interact to shape microplastic ingestion risk in groups of European minnows.
Supplementary Material from Intraspecific behavioural and environmental contexts influence collective risk of microplastic ingestion in a social fish
AI summary Read the abstract
Researchers provided supplementary modeling data from an experiment examining how social dominance and water flow interact to influence microplastic ingestion risk in European minnows, supporting the primary finding that behavioral and environmental context jointly shape collective exposure in group-living fish.
Intraspecific behavioural and environmental contexts influence collective risk of microplastic ingestion in a social fish
AI summary Read the abstract
Scientists found that in schools of small fish, the "bossy" dominant fish actually ate more microplastic pollution than their subordinates, especially in flowing water like rivers or streams — meaning the pushiest, most successful fish may be getting exposed to more plastic contamination, not less. This matters because it shows microplastics can sneak into the food chain in surprising ways tied to social behavior, and since these fish are commonly eaten by humans or other wildlife, understanding who ingests plastic and why helps us better predict contamination risks in the fish we eventually consume.
Social dominance influences individual susceptibility to an evolutionary trap in mosquitofish
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Social dominance hierarchy in mosquitofish groups influenced individual susceptibility to plastic ingestion as an evolutionary trap, with subordinate fish in larger groups showing altered plastic consumption behavior—demonstrating that social context mediates how animals fall into evolutionary traps posed by plastic pollution.
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