Microplastic consumption elevates fish oxidative stress but does not affect predator-driven mortality
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The ubiquity and abundance of plastic debris is one of the most significant challenges facing marine environments. Recent research has demonstrated that microplastics are consumed by marine organisms from a wide variety of trophic levels. However, little is known about the sub-lethal effects of microplastic exposure on the health of coral reef fishes or their impacts on predator-prey interactions. To examine this, we exposed juvenile Ambon damselfish (Pomacentrus amboinensis) to one of two types of polystyrene plastic particles (virgin, or with the plasticizer di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate - DEHP), and a control (no plastic). After 2 days (6 exposures), the initiation of antioxidant metabolism and oxidative defence was quantified. We also exposed the treated juvenile fish to a piscivorous fish (Pseudochromis fuscus) in mesocosms over a 22-h period to investigate whether microplastic exposure affected prey survival. Biomarkers associated with oxidative damage and antioxidant metabolism indicated that microplastic exposure had a negative effect on the health of P. amboinensis. Additionally, P. amboinensis exposed to DEHP microplastics showed the greatest levels of oxidative stress and damage, however the magnitude of this was dependent on the number of ingested particles. Interestingly, survival of P. amboinensis did not differ among plastic treatments during mesocosm survival trials. These results highlight that while studies may not find immediate lethal consequences to plastic ingestion, there may be more subtle sub-lethal costs that may have ecologically important consequences at later life stages, through energetic impacts on growth and energy allocation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".