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The Effect of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Polypropylene (PP) Microplastics on Ulva lactuca L. and Ceramium diaphanum R. Algal Growth
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Researchers tested the effects of ABS and polypropylene microplastics on the growth of two marine algae species collected from the Turkish coast. They found that ABS microplastics had no significant effect on the macroalga Ulva lactuca, but both plastic types affected the microalga Ceramium diaphanum to varying degrees. The study suggests that different algal species and microplastic polymer types produce distinct ecological interactions in marine environments.
The goal of this study was to determine the effects of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and polypropylene microplastics as two typical classes for microplastic pollution on algal growth, lipids, carbohydrates, chlorophyll-a and total carotenoid content of Ulva lactuca L. and Ceramium diaphanum R. collected from the Gulf coast of Izmir province. The results demonstrate that ABS-MPs had no statistical effect (P>0.05) on the various physiological parameters of U. lactuca macroalgae after 5 days of exposure, except for the total carbohydrate and lipid concentration. The chl-a value of C. diaphanum was considerably increased under the low concentration of ABS (25 mg L-1), increasing by 81.56% compared with the control while the amount of chl-a decreases (32.05%) in parallel with the increasing concentration of PP-MPs. Laboratory incubation experiments showed that MPs affect relative growth rate, pigments efficiency or carbohydrate content of C. diaphanum until reaching an extremely high concentration (100 mg L-1), indicating a high tolerance to MPs. The results showed that two macroalgae species, especially U. lactuca, were not highly affected at low MPs concentrations under laboratory conditions which were much higher than the levels of environmentally relevant concentrations.
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