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Cited by 215

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 15 of the 15 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Plastic pollution fosters more microbial growth in lakes than natural organic matter

Open access
Sheridan, Eleanor A., Fonvielle, Jérémy A., Cottingham, Samuel, Zhang, Yi, Dittmar, Thorsten, Aldridge, David C., Tanentzap, Andrew J.·2022·Nature Communications

Abstract

Plastic debris widely pollutes freshwaters. Abiotic and biotic degradation of plastics releases carbon-based substrates that are available for heterotrophic growth, but little is known about how these novel organic compounds influence microbial metabolism. Here we found leachate from plastic shopping bags was chemically distinct and more bioavailable than natural organic matter from 29 Scandinavian lakes. Consequently, plastic leachate increased bacterial biomass acquisition by 2.29-times when added at an environmentally-relevant concentration to lake surface waters. These results were not solely attributable to the amount of dissolved organic carbon provided by the leachate. Bacterial growth was 1.72-times more efficient with plastic leachate because the added carbon was more accessible than natural organic matter. These effects varied with both the availability of alternate, especially labile, carbon sources and bacterial diversity. Together, our results suggest that plastic pollution may stimulate aquatic food webs and highlight where pollution mitigation strategies could be most effective.

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Metadata

Authors
Sheridan, E. A., Fonvielle, J. A., Cottingham, S., Zhang, Y., Dittmar, T., Aldridge, D. C., & Tanentzap, A. J.
Venue
Nature Communications
Published
2022-07-26
Volume
13
Issue
1
Pages
4175-4175
ISSN
2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4288069224
Cited by
215
References
15
FWCI
9.03
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
gold

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Plastic pollution fosters more microbial growth in lakes than natural organic matter. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41467-022-31691-9
The paper
Sheridan, E. A., Fonvielle, J. A., Cottingham, S., Zhang, Y., Dittmar, T., Aldridge, D. C., & Tanentzap, A. J. (2022). Plastic pollution fosters more microbial growth in lakes than natural organic matter. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31691-9

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Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.