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Supplemental materials for book chapter: Microplastics in Marine Food Webs
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This review paper critically examines what is known about microplastics in marine food webs, clarifying the processes of trophic transfer, bioaccumulation, and biomagnification. The authors find clear evidence that microplastics transfer between predator and prey, but no evidence that they biomagnify — a key distinction for understanding human exposure through seafood consumption.
The identification of microplastics (MPs; 1 µm - 5 mm) and the inferred presence of nanoplastics (NPs; <1 µm) in a wide variety of marine animals, including many seafood species, has raised important questions about the presence, movement, and impacts of these particles in marine food webs. Understanding microplastic dynamics in marine food webs requires elucidation of the processes involved, including bioaccumulation, trophic transfer, and biomagnification. However, in the context of microplastics and nanoplastics these concepts are often misunderstood. In this chapter, we provide a critical review of the literature on the behavior of plastic particles in marine food webs. We find clear evidence of trophic transfer, equivocal evidence for bioaccumulation, and no evidence for biomagnification. We also identify a number of knowledge gaps that limit our ability to draw firm conclusions at this time. These supplemental documents are in support of an invited chapter to be published in this book: S.E. Shumway and J.E. Ward (Eds.) Plastics in the Sea: Occurrence and Impacts (Elsevier 2023).
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.