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Responses of freshwater organisms to multiple stressors in a climate change scenario: a review on small-scale experiments
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This review summarizes 156 publications on how freshwater organisms respond to combinations of temperature and salinity changes along with other stressors including metals, pesticides, and emerging contaminants like microplastics in controlled small-scale experiments. It finds that combined stressor effects are often non-additive and species-specific, with significant knowledge gaps remaining for microplastic interactions under climate change scenarios.
This review summarizes how salinity and temperature, two key global factors driven by climate change in freshwater systems, interact with other stressors on organisms in controlled small-scale factorial experiments at the population, individual, or subindividual level (excluding mesocosm and field studies). Despite the growing interest, research following all these criteria remains limited with 156 publications of which 50% analyzed stressors + salinity, 46% stressors + temperature, and only 4% involved the triple combination. Research on the combined effect of temperature and salinity predominantly focused on metals, pesticides, and, to a lesser extent, emergent contaminants, such as microplastics and nanomaterials, encompassing various biological models and responses. In general, increased temperature amplifies the single effect of stressors, whereas salinity leads to a higher diversity of responses, with similar proportions of synergisms and antagonisms. Fish (Salmoniformes, Perciformes, and Cypriniformes) were the most studied organisms. Among Crustacea, only cladocerans of the genera Daphnia and Ceriodpahnia were considered. The present review highlights the need to include other species that play key roles in freshwater food webs and to increase triple combination studies to understand complex interactions and develop adaptation and mitigation strategies to preserve the environment and its services in this changing world.
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Researchers reviewed nanoplastic ecotoxicity in freshwater organisms under realistic co-exposure scenarios with metals, pesticides, and climate change stressors, finding that synergistic toxicity was especially common — often driven by nanoplastics acting as Trojan horse vectors — and that rising temperatures generally amplified nanoplastic harm across fish and invertebrate taxa.
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Researchers examined how aquatic organisms face multiple simultaneous stressors — including plastic pollution, climate change, altered pH, and habitat loss — finding that the combined interactive effects of these threats are poorly understood yet critical to developing effective conservation and management strategies.
Meta-analysis reveals temperature increase exacerbates microplastic toxicity in freshwater invertebrates
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This meta-analysis pools data from multiple studies to show that rising temperatures make microplastics more toxic to freshwater invertebrates. The combined stress of warming water and plastic pollution caused greater harm to growth, reproduction, and survival than either stressor alone, suggesting that climate change will worsen the ecological and health impacts of microplastic contamination.
Freshwater systems in the Anthropocene: why we need to evaluate microplastics in the context of multiple stressors
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Real-world organisms are exposed to microplastics alongside many other environmental stressors — temperature change, chemical pollutants, habitat degradation — yet most lab studies test microplastics in isolation. This review argues that ecotoxicology needs to adopt a multi-stressor approach to truly understand how microplastics affect freshwater life at every level, from individual cells to whole ecosystems. Without this broader context, risk assessments will consistently underestimate the actual harm microplastics cause in nature.
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