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Ingestion of nano/micro plastic particles by the mussel Mytilus coruscus is size dependent
Summary
Researchers investigated how the thick shell mussel Mytilus coruscus ingests plastic particles of different sizes, ranging from 70 nanometers to 100 micrometers. They found that smaller particles were ingested in greater quantities and accumulated primarily in the digestive tract, while particles also translocated to the mantle tissue over time. The study demonstrates that plastic particle ingestion by mussels is strongly size-dependent, with smaller particles posing a greater accumulation risk.
Plastic particles are thought to accumulate in aquatic organisms and cause potential physiological effects. The uneven sizes of plastic particles may affect the ingestion by marine filter feeding bivalves and may lead to differential further physiological effects. To tackle this scientific question, we investigated the size dependent ingestion and dynamic accumulation of nano/micro plastic particles with different diameters (0.07, 0.5, 5, 10 and 100 μm) in the thick shell mussel Mytilus coruscus. The accumulation of particles in gill, digestive tract and mantle of mussels was measured after 3, 15, 87 h exposure and following 87 h depuration. The results showed that particle ingestion was negatively size dependant and positively related to time in digestive tract. In mantle, particles accumulated over the depuration time with a delay, indicating the translocation of particles. Moreover, our results showed that gill was not a target tissue for steady particle accumulation but the digestive tract was. This study showed size dependent and dynamic ingestion of nano/micro particles in mussels which are one of the main marine organisms for accumulating microplastics.