Plastic debris is thought to be widespread in freshwater ecosystems globally(1). However, a lack of comprehensive and comparable data makes rigorous assessment of its distribution challenging(2,3). Here we present a standardized cross-national survey that assesses the abundance and type of plastic debris (>250 mu m) in freshwater ecosystems. We sample surface waters of 38 lakes and reservoirs, distributed acros...
Plastic debris is widespread in freshwater ecosystems, but a rigorous assessment of its global distribution has been hindered by a lack of comprehensive and comparable data. We performed the first standardized global survey of lakes to assess the quantity and type of plastics (>250μm). We included 38 lakes located in 23 different countries distributed across five continents, spanning different environmental gra...
Food webs are being increasingly used to predict ecosystem stability. The ultimate food web properties already account for the abiotic (environment) and biotic interactions (i.e. predator-prey interactions). While the importance of abiotic environment on a single taxonomical or functional diversity is being recognized, the role of environment in structuring trophic interactions is less explored. Additionally, f...
Most of the biological rates (growth, metabolic, reproduction) are greatly associated with body mass. Trophic interactions are also highly dependent on body mass due to feeding constraints. Scaling of body mass with abundance, known as size spectrum, provides information on community structure, energy flow, and ecosystem functioning. However, not many studies have incorporated individual body mass-abundance sca...
Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has the potential to improve aquatic biodiversity assessments by improving detection capability, taxonomic resolution and cost-effectiveness when compared to morphological- based approaches. Advances have been made in the field of metabarcoding, but challenges remain, including sensitivity of results to DNA extraction method and marker choice, and its dependency on often-i...
The majority of microplastic research has focused on seawater, with fewer than 4% of microplasticsrelated studies occurring on freshwaters. The limited available information suggests that the abundance of microplastics in freshwaters is often as high or even higher than marine environments. However, comprehensive investigations on occurrence and fate of microplastics in freshwaters are scarce and highly fragmen...