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Episodic records of jellyfish ingestion of plastic items reveal a novel pathway for trophic transference of marine litter

Scientific Reports 2018 89 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 40 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.

Armando Macali, Alexander Semenov, Valentina Venuti, Vincenza Crupi, Francesco D’Amico, Barbara Rossi, Ilaria Corsi, Elisa Bergami

Summary

Researchers documented for the first time that jellyfish ingest macroplastic debris, revealing a previously overlooked pathway by which plastic pollution travels up the marine food chain. This finding raises fresh concern about how widely plastic is spreading through ocean ecosystems via invertebrates, which make up the vast majority of marine life.

Invertebrates represent the most plentiful component of marine biodiversity. To date, only few species have been documented for marine litter intake. Here, we report for the first time the presence of macroplastic debris in a jellyfish species. Such novel target to plastic pollution highlights an under studied vector of marine litter along marine trophic web, raising further concern over the impact on marine wildlife.

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