Journal
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
Volume 571, Issue -, Pages 251-258Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.07.158
Keywords
Birdshot; Diet; Metal; Microplastics; Non-plastic rubbish
Categories
Funding
- Nova Scotia Innovation & Research Graduate Scholarship (Master's) in Ocean Science & Tech/Life Sciences
- Acadia Graduate Scholarship, Ducks Unlimited/Acadia Research Partnership Grant
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [418551-2012]
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Plastics in marine environments are a global environmental issue. Plastic ingestion is associated with a variety of deleterious health effects in marine wildlife, and is a focus of much international research and monitoring. However, little research has focused on ramifications of plastic debris for freshwater organisms, despite marine and freshwater environments often having comparable plastic concentrations, We quantified plastic and other anthropogenic debris in 350 individuals of 17 freshwater and one marine bird species collected across Canada. We determined freshwater birds' anthropogenic debris ingestion rates to be 11.1% across all species studied. This work establishes that plastics and other anthropogenic debris are a genuine concern for management of the health of freshwater ecosystems, and provides a baseline for the prevalence of plastic and other anthropogenic debris ingestion in freshwater birds in Canada, with relevance for many other locations. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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