Meeting Abstract
In the oceans, plastic waste breaks down into microplastics (<5mm diameter) that may be ingested by prey organisms and transferred up trophic levels to their predators, disrupting food webs. We hypothesized that microplastics consumed by brine shrimp, Artemia salina, could move up the food web to the predatory moon jelly, Aurelia aurita. We compared ingestion and gut progression of 90um diameter polypropylene pieces and fish flakes in Artemia over 120 minutes and found no significant differences in the consumption or the rate of progression through the gut. To determine whether jellies themselves consume plastics, we compared ingestion of microplastics in four suspension feeding treatments: (plastic alone, Artemia, Artemia + plastic, plastic-fed Artemia) and two gavage treatments (plastic alone, plastic-fed Artemia). Jellies did not eat plastic alone but after two hours we did observe plastic in 100% of jellies in the Artemia + plastic treatment. While we observed plastic in 75% of gavage-fed jellies after two hours, after four hours jellies had cleared their guts of plastic. In contrast, after four hours 100% of gavage-fed jellies in the plastic-fed Artemia treatment still contained plastic. Plastic can move across trophic levels from brine shrimp to jellies and has the potential to move further up trophic levels in ocean systems.
