Microplastics Seem to Be in Every Kind of Animal… Except One
Rocks crumble into the sea as sand. Similarly, the ocean is an inevitable destination of disintegrating human rubbish: microplastics.
Much like a natural sediment, these tiny synthetic granules also make their way into the bellies of the creatures that call the sea home.
But one tiny organism, notorious for its ability to return to life after a trip to space, being frozen or boiled, asphyxiated, even bombarded with radiation, seems to have yet another hidden ability up its wee sleeves. In a study of diverse tiny creatures, tardigrades were seemingly immune to swallowing microplastics.
A team led by zoologist Flávia de França from the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil collected samples of meiofauna – intertidal invertebrates between around 45 micrometers to 1 millimeter – from the shallow sediments of a sandy beach on the northeastern coast of Brazil at low tide.
Within these samples they found 5,629 individual organisms, including nematodes, segmented worms, flatworms, bristleworms, seed shrimp, hairybellies, mites, crustaceans and their larvae. And let's not forget the celebrity of the meioverse: the tardigrade.
