Caddisfly larvae (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae) facilitate the uptake of microplastics by a freshwater fish (Ameiurus nebulosus)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Microplastics are pervasive in inland waters and are entering aquatic food webs through diverse pathways. Caddisflies (Trichoptera) are common prey items for fishes and some aquatic birds; they have been found to incorporate microplastic particles in their larval cases, which are a potential vector of plastic transmission to higher trophic levels. We examined this novel pathway in two sets of experiments. First, we exposed caseless Limnephilus larvae to either i) a 50 % mixture of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microfragments and natural materials, or ii) 100 % natural materials, and compared their subsequent case construction. Limnephilus consistently incorporated PET into their cases, even when natural material was available. However, only 5 % of larvae constructed a case completely covering the abdominal region of their body when they used PET fragments. Cases incorporating plastic had a lower mass than those constructed entirely from natural materials, regardless of the mass of the larvae. These findings suggest that the incorporation of microplastics affects case structure and, potentially, functionality. In a subsequent set of experiments, we offered four partially plastic-cased and four natural-cased caddisfly larvae to a benthivorous fish, the brown bullhead (Ameiurus nebulosus). Ninety percent (9/10) of the bullheads selected a larva with plastic in its case over a larva with a fully natural case as the first prey they attacked. Overall, consumption of plastic-cased larvae represented 63 % of all prey consumed, suggesting that the incorporation of PET microplastic fragments in case matrices renders larval caddisflies more vulnerable to predation. Case-building caddisflies can thus facilitate the transfer of plastic and associated contaminants into aquatic food webs.
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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) | 0.003 | 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".