Papers

20 results
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Article Tier 2

Insight into the multifactorial effect of climate change on marine bacteria: resilience mechanisms and mitigation strategies

This review examines how multiple climate change factors — including ocean acidification, warming, deoxygenation, and anthropogenic pollutants including microplastics — interact to affect marine bacteria and their roles in biogeochemical cycling. The authors synthesize resilience mechanisms employed by marine bacteria and discuss mitigation strategies to preserve microbial ecosystem functions under accelerating environmental change.

2025 Critical Reviews in Microbiology
Article Tier 2

Combined effects of microplastics contamination and marine heatwaves on carbon cycling in coastal marine sediments

Researchers investigated the combined effects of microplastic contamination and marine heatwaves on carbon cycling processes in coastal marine sediments, examining how co-occurring stressors interact to alter microbial carbon processing. The study found that microplastics and elevated temperatures associated with marine heatwaves produced interactive effects on sediment carbon cycling, demonstrating that these two anthropogenic pressures cannot be adequately assessed in isolation.

2024 Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Article Tier 2

Functional responses of key marine bacteria to environmental change – toward genetic counselling for coastal waters

This review examined the functional responses of key marine bacteria to environmental stressors including nutrient pollution and chemical contamination in coastal ecosystems, arguing that bacteria are overlooked both as indicators and mediators of ecosystem health. The authors call for incorporating bacterial functional metrics into marine ecosystem monitoring and management frameworks.

2022 Frontiers in Microbiology 17 citations
Article Tier 2

Culture dependent analysis of bacterial activity, biofilm-formation and oxidative stress of seawater with the contamination of microplastics under climate change consideration

Researchers examined how temperature changes and microplastic contamination jointly affect bacterial activity, biofilm formation, and oxidative stress in seawater. The study found that different plastic materials at varying temperatures produced distinct bacterial responses, suggesting that climate change could compound the environmental effects of microplastic pollution in marine settings.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 15 citations
Article Tier 2

Research progress in ecotoxicology of climate change coupled with marine pollutions

This review examined how rising ocean temperatures and acidification from climate change interact with marine pollutants including microplastics, finding that combined stressors often produce worse effects than either alone. The research underscores that plastic pollution cannot be addressed in isolation from the broader context of global climate change.

2017 Chinese Science Bulletin (Chinese Version) 2 citations
Article Tier 2

Oysters under anthropogenic pressure: A cellular perspective on the interactive effects of microplastic pollution and climate change

Researchers exposed oysters to microplastics under combined conditions of elevated temperature and ocean acidification, finding that climate change stressors significantly altered the cellular response to MP pollution. Temperature had a stronger effect than acidification, and combined stressors produced non-additive interactions in immune and oxidative stress markers.

2025 Media (https://www.suub.uni-bremen.de/)
Article Tier 2

Marine microbes in the Plastic Age

This review examines how marine microbes interact with plastic debris in the ocean, describing the physical threats of plastic ingestion and entanglement as well as chemical threats from plastic-associated toxins that can bioaccumulate through food webs. Researchers call for greater investigation into how plastic pollution alters microbial community composition, biodegradation potential, and the broader functioning of ocean ecosystems.

2014 Microbiology Australia 29 citations
Article Tier 2

A Comprehensive Review of Climatic Threats and Adaptation of Marine Biodiversity

This comprehensive review examines how climate change threatens marine biodiversity through rising ocean temperatures, acidification, and habitat loss. Among the many environmental stressors discussed, microplastic pollution is highlighted as an additional threat that compounds the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. The paper evaluates adaptation strategies like marine protected areas and habitat restoration that could help protect the ocean ecosystems humans depend on for food.

2024 Journal of Marine Science and Engineering 33 citations
Article Tier 2

Human impact on symbioses between aquatic organisms and microbes

This review examined how human-driven stressors — including pollution, climate change, and habitat modification — disrupt beneficial microbial symbioses in aquatic organisms, arguing that disrupted host-microbe relationships represent an underappreciated pathway through which environmental degradation harms aquatic ecosystems.

2021 Aquatic Microbial Ecology 30 citations
Article Tier 2

Nano-ecotoxicology in a changing ocean

Researchers reviewed how ocean warming, acidification, and chemical co-contaminants interact with nanomaterial pollution in marine environments, finding that these combined stressors often alter how toxic nanoparticles behave in seawater — sometimes making them more dangerous and sometimes less — highlighting the need to study pollutants in realistic, multi-stressor conditions.

2022 SN Applied Sciences 13 citations
Article Tier 2

Warming and microplastic pollution shape the carbon and nitrogen cycles of algae

Researchers investigated how ocean warming combined with microplastic pollution affects carbon and nitrogen cycling in marine diatoms and dinoflagellates, revealing that these combined stressors alter key biochemical processes in dominant phytoplankton species.

2023 Journal of Hazardous Materials 51 citations
Article Tier 2

Unveiling the hidden world of microorganisms and their impact on the Earth's ecosystems

This paper is not directly about microplastics; it is a broad review of microbial ecology covering microorganism roles in biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and metals, and how advances in genomics have transformed our understanding of microbial community diversity and function.

2023 mLife
Article Tier 2

The effect of climate change and microplastics on the physiology of marine invertebrates of economic interest

This thesis examines how climate change and microplastic pollution interact to affect the physiology of marine invertebrates important for aquaculture. Combined stressors were found to have compounding effects on organisms like mussels and oysters, threatening both ecosystems and food security.

2023 LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas)
Article Tier 2

Combined influence of the nanoplastics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons exposure on microbial community in seawater environment

Researchers studied the individual and combined effects of nanoplastics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on microbial communities in seawater. They found that the combination of these two pollutants altered microbial diversity and community structure differently than either pollutant alone. The study suggests that the interaction between nanoplastics and chemical pollutants in the ocean may have complex and unpredictable effects on marine microbial ecosystems.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 7 citations
Article Tier 2

Warming Modulates Microplastic Impacts on Coastal Nitrogen Cycling by Synergistically Amplifying Sediment Hypoxia and Restructuring the Denitrifying Microbiome

Climate warming and microplastic pollution are converging stressors in coastal environments, but their combined effects on ocean chemistry were poorly understood. This microcosm study found that warming and microplastics interacted in complex, non-additive ways to disrupt nitrogen cycling in coastal sediments—sometimes amplifying each other's harmful effects and sometimes canceling them out, depending on the plastic type and the specific biological process. Most concerning, warming combined with both polyethylene and PBAT microplastics created more intense oxygen-depleted zones in sediments, which can trigger dead zones that suffocate marine life. These findings suggest that the ecological risks of microplastic pollution will worsen as oceans warm, complicating predictions based on either stressor studied alone.

2026 Environmental Science & Technology
Article Tier 2

The threat of microplastics and microbial degradation potential; a current perspective

This review covers the growing threat of microplastics in marine environments, where they enter the food chain and can transfer to humans along with pathogenic organisms, causing various toxic effects. The paper also explores how bacteria and fungi found in ocean environments could be harnessed to biodegrade different types of plastics as a future strategy for reducing microplastic pollution.

2024 The Science of The Total Environment 21 citations
Article Tier 2

Warming alters temporal patterns of microbial-mediated nitrogen cycling under microplastics stress in intertidal sediment ecosystems

Researchers incubated intertidal sediment microcosms with polyethylene microplastics at two temperatures (25 and 30 degrees C) to examine how warming interacts with microplastics to alter microbial nitrogen cycling. Elevated temperature and microplastic concentrations disrupted key nitrogen-cycling functions, with metagenomic analysis revealing shifts in functional gene composition that could affect coastal nutrient dynamics.

2025 Journal of Hazardous Materials
Article Tier 2

Microplastics and microbial interactions in marine environments: A critical review on biogeochemical cycling and ecological impacts

This review integrated bibliometric analysis of 2015-2025 literature with mechanistic synthesis to examine how marine microplastic pollution affects ecosystems through physicochemical and biological processes, highlighting the multifaceted interactions between microplastics and microbial communities.

2025 Marine Pollution Bulletin
Article Tier 2

Microbiomes of the Aquatic Environment

This review examines the diversity and ecological roles of microbial communities in aquatic environments, covering microbiomes associated with aquatic insects, plants, fish, phytoplankton, macrophytes, and microplastics, and their interconnected functions in nutrient cycling and primary production. The authors discuss how climate change, eutrophication, and pollution are shifting microbial community composition in ways that threaten the functioning of freshwater and marine ecosystems.

2024
Review Tier 2

Environmental behavior and toxic effects of micro(nano)plastics and engineered nanoparticles on marine organisms under ocean acidification: A review.

This review examined how ocean acidification interacts with the toxicity of micro- and nano-plastics and engineered nanoparticles in marine ecosystems, finding that lower pH can alter particle surface chemistry and enhance toxic effects in some organisms. The combined stressor perspective is important because climate change and plastic pollution are co-occurring in the same marine environments.

2024 Environmental research