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Ecosystem engineers come to town: how fiddler crabs thriving in heavily polluted urban mangroves process plastic particles
Summary
Researchers tracked the uptake and fate of labeled polyethylene microspheres in the fiddler crab Minuca vocator in heavily polluted urban mangroves over 66 days, finding one of the highest microplastic ingestion rates ever recorded in nature (48.7 particles per crab) and examining how these ecosystem engineers process plastic-laden sediments.
Fiddler crab populations are thriving in plastic-polluted hotspots, prompting inquiry into how these creatures navigate the substantial plastic loads within sediments they have evolved to inhabit and feed upon. We released labeled polyethylene microspheres into polluted urban mangroves inhabited by the crab Minuca vocator, which allowed us to track the uptake and fate of microplastics in the crab's organs and in the sediments during 66 days. The observed uptake of microplastics (48.7 per crab) is one of the highest ever recorded in nature and 15 Also see: https://micro2024.sciencesconf.org/559247/document
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