Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLLUTION RESEARCH
Volume 24, Issue 12, Pages 11856-11859Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-017-8887-7
Keywords
Beachlitter; Coastaldunevegetation; Phragmites australis; Spartina versicolor; Anthemis maritima; Central Italy
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Among the many threats that can be recorded on sandy beaches, plastic litter represents a serious problem for these complex and endangered ecosystems. Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is increasingly abundant as a form of plastic litter in natural environments, particularly along shores and waterways. Nevertheless, despite the great number of scientific articles concerning the impact of litter on animal species, there are still no research focusing on the interaction between this type of beach litter and other biodiversity components. In this work, we reported the first evidence of interactions between EPS and living plants along a sandy beach of Tyrrhenian central Italy. We sampled 540 EPS items, mainly deriving from fishery activities (> 75%). We obtained evidence for an interaction between EPS and plants: about 5% of items resulted perforated or have roots of three species (Phragmites australis, Spartina versicolor, Anthemis maritima). Apparently, we did not observed a relationship between plants and EPS items size. More research is needed to assess if the plant assemblage growing on EPS is random or if peculiar substrate exerts some sort of selection on the plant community.
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