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61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Life in the Balance: Zooplankton’s Battle in a Changing Environment
ClearAn assessment of the ecosystem services of marine zooplankton and the key threats to their provision
Researchers conducted the first comprehensive assessment of the ecosystem services that marine zooplankton provide, including supporting fisheries, carbon cycling, and nutrient transport. They found that stressors such as microplastic pollution, climate change, and overfishing could significantly reduce these services, with downstream effects on food security and human well-being. The study highlights that protecting zooplankton populations is essential for maintaining the broader benefits that healthy oceans provide to society.
Impacts of Environmental Change and Microplastic Pollution on Zooplankton
This review examined how environmental changes including warming, ocean acidification, and microplastic pollution are affecting zooplankton communities, covering effects on physiology, behavior, reproduction, and population dynamics. Combined stressors were found to have greater impacts than any single factor.
Impacts of Microplastics on Zooplankton
This review examines the impacts of microplastics on zooplankton communities, covering how microplastic ingestion and physicochemical alterations of aquatic environments affect zooplankton feeding, reproduction, and community structure. Zooplankton are highlighted as ecologically critical organisms whose disruption can cascade through aquatic food webs.
The Impacts of Microplastics on Zooplankton
This review examines the growing concern about microplastic impacts on marine and freshwater zooplankton, noting that these tiny organisms can ingest microplastics and are at the base of most aquatic food webs. Plastic ingestion can cause gut blockages, immune responses, energy loss, and reduced reproduction, with potential cascading effects on ecosystems and the species—including fish and humans—that feed on zooplankton.
A global biogeography analysis reveals vulnerability of surface marine zooplankton to anthropogenic stressors
Researchers used global ocean models to track multiple threats to zooplankton — tiny marine animals that support ocean food webs — and found that their combined vulnerability has doubled over the past 50 years due to warming, acidification, contaminants (including microplastics), and reduced food quality.
Freshwater Lacustrine Zooplankton and Microplastic: An Issue to Be Still Explored
This review examined the interactions between freshwater lacustrine zooplankton and microplastics, highlighting how microplastic ingestion affects planktonic organisms that form the base of lake food webs. The authors call for more research on lake-specific microplastic dynamics.
Editorial: Current and future threats to marine zooplankton in changing polar oceans and their potential for adaption and coping
This editorial reviews current and future threats to marine zooplankton in changing polar oceans, synthesizing research on how anthropogenic climate change affects food-source availability, distribution, reproductive success, and survival of polar zooplankton communities, while considering their adaptive potential.
Effects of water quality and seasonality on Zooplankton responses
This review examines how water quality parameters—temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, salinity, and nutrient levels—and seasonal variation influence zooplankton abundance, diversity, and physiological responses. The authors synthesize evidence showing that zooplankton are sensitive bioindicators of environmental change in freshwater and marine ecosystems.
Zooplankton responses to environmentally relevant microplastic conditions at low food availability
Researchers exposed marine zooplankton to environmentally relevant concentrations of microplastics under realistic low-exposure conditions, measuring effects on feeding, reproduction, and survival over multiple generations. Even at low concentrations, chronic microplastic exposure reduced zooplankton fitness.
The characteristics of plastic nanoparticles and their effect on zooplankton
This thesis reviewed the characteristics of plastic nanoparticles and their potential effects on zooplankton, which are a foundational component of aquatic food webs. Because nanoplastics are smaller than microplastics, they are more easily taken up by tiny organisms and may have more pervasive ecological effects.
Ecotoxicological effects of traditional and emerging microplastics on marine zooplankton: A review
Researchers reviewed how microplastics harm marine zooplankton (tiny animals that form a critical link in ocean food chains) at the molecular level, covering effects like metabolic disruption, oxidative stress, immune damage, and neurotoxicity — and extended the review to include emerging plastics like tire-wear particles and antifouling paint particles that are often overlooked. The review calls for moving beyond treating all microplastics as identical, since their varying physical and chemical properties produce very different toxic effects.
Microplastics impact simple aquatic food web dynamics through reduced zooplankton feeding and potentially releasing algae from consumer control
Researchers investigated how environmentally relevant concentrations of microplastics affect freshwater food web dynamics using two zooplankton species. The study found that microplastic exposure reduced zooplankton feeding rates, which could potentially release algae from consumer control and disrupt aquatic food chain balance.
Zooplankton as a suitable tool for microplastic research
The study suggests that zooplankton can serve as a useful proxy for assessing the presence of microplastic particles in ocean waters, since these organisms ingest plastic particles both intentionally and accidentally. Researchers highlight the advantages of using zooplankton in laboratory studies and emphasize the need for reliable methodologies, especially for detecting smaller microplastic fractions under 100 micrometers.
How microplastics influence the health and microbiota of aquatic invertebrates: A review
This review examines how microplastics affect the health and microbiota of aquatic invertebrates, an area that has received less attention than fish studies. Researchers summarize evidence showing that microplastics cause toxicity at biological and molecular levels, alter microbial communities associated with invertebrate hosts, and interact with climate change and other pollutants to produce combined effects. The study highlights significant knowledge gaps and proposes future research directions for understanding microplastic impacts on aquatic ecosystems.
Toxicity effects and mechanism of micro/nanoplastics and loaded conventional pollutants on zooplankton: An overview
This review summarizes how microplastics and nanoplastics harm zooplankton, the tiny animals at the base of aquatic food chains, through physical blockage, oxidative stress, gene disruption, and reproductive damage. The effects are worse when microplastics carry other pollutants like heavy metals or pesticides on their surfaces. Since zooplankton are eaten by fish that humans consume, damage to these organisms can transfer microplastic contamination up the food chain to people.
Quantification and analysis of emerging threats studies on freshwater zooplankton (Copepoda, Cladocera and Rotifera) in Brazil from 2014 to 2023
Researchers quantified and analysed the research literature on emerging threats to freshwater zooplankton including Copepoda, Cladocera, and Rotifera, mapping the scope and geographic distribution of studies examining stressors such as microplastics, chemicals, and climate change on these ecologically critical invertebrate groups.
Bioavailability and effects of microplastics on marine zooplankton: A review
This review synthesized laboratory and field evidence on microplastic bioavailability and effects on marine zooplankton, finding that multiple taxa readily ingest microplastics with negative impacts on feeding, reproduction, and energy balance, and that zooplankton represent a critical route for transferring microplastics into marine food webs. The authors identify particle size, concentration, and feeding behavior as the main determinants of microplastic bioavailability to zooplankton.
Is Zooplankton an Entry Point of Microplastics into the Marine Food Web?
Researchers investigated microplastic ingestion by zooplankton in natural marine environments, examining whether copepods and other zooplankton serve as an entry point for transferring microplastics from the water column into the marine food web.
Chapter 7 Review: Effects of Microplastic on Zooplankton Survival and Sublethal Responses
This review synthesizes findings from 88 studies on how microplastics affect the survival, growth, reproduction, and behavior of zooplankton — tiny animals that form a critical link in aquatic food chains. Evidence consistently shows that microplastics can reduce survival and reproductive success across multiple zooplankton groups at environmentally relevant concentrations.
Microplastic effects in aquatic ecosystems with special reference to fungi–zooplankton interaction: identification of knowledge gaps and prioritization of research needs
This review identifies a largely unexplored gap in microplastic research: how plastic pollution affects aquatic fungi and their interactions with zooplankton. Because fungi play critical roles in breaking down dead organic matter and serving as food for zooplankton, disruptions caused by microplastics — which can physically resemble fungal spores in size — could have cascading effects on freshwater food webs and nutrient cycling. The authors call for targeted experiments to fill this knowledge gap and better predict ecosystem-level impacts of microplastic contamination.
Modeling the Impact of Microplastics on Metabolic Rates andMortality of Zooplankton
Researchers developed a mathematical model to predict how microplastic exposure affects the metabolism and survival rates of zooplankton, the tiny animals that form the base of aquatic food chains. Understanding these effects is important because changes to zooplankton populations ripple upward through ecosystems to fish and the species that eat them.
Ecology of mesozooplankton in a subtropical coastal lagoon: composition, spatial distribution and interactions with microplastic pollution
Researchers studied mesozooplankton ecology in a subtropical coastal lagoon, examining community composition, spatial distribution, and interactions with microplastic pollution to understand how plastic contamination affects zooplankton dynamics in coastal environments.
Microplastic intrusion into the zooplankton, the base of the marine food chain: Evidence from the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean
Microplastics were detected across diverse zooplankton groups in the Arabian Sea basin, with fiber-type particles most prevalent, demonstrating that microplastics have entered the base of the marine food chain in open ocean waters. The study establishes baseline contamination levels and highlights zooplankton as sentinels for microplastic pollution monitoring.
Microplastic Ingestion by Zooplankton
This study examined whether tiny marine animals called zooplankton can ingest microplastics, and researchers found that thirteen different zooplankton species consumed plastic beads of various sizes. The plastics also stuck to the animals' outer shells and significantly reduced their normal feeding on algae, suggesting that microplastic pollution could disrupt the base of the marine food web.