Bioaccumulation and biomagnification of heavy metals in marine micro-predators

作者：Roberto Danovaro, Adele Cocozza di Montanara, Cinzia Corinaldesi, Antonio Dell’Anno, Silvia Illuminati, Trevor J. Willis, Cristina Gambi · 发表于：Communications Biology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1038/s42003-023-05539-x · 被引用次数：65 · 研究领域：Marine Biology and Ecology Research、Mercury impact and mitigation studies、Heavy metals in environment

Nematodes represent >3/5 of the abundance of the world's metazoans and usually account for nearly 90% of the total benthic fauna, playing a key ecological role in the benthic ecosystem functioning on a global scale. These small metazoans include a relevant number of microscopic predators and, in turn, are the most abundant preys of macro-megafauna and fish juveniles thus playing a key role in marine food webs. Here, using two independent approaches, we test the bioaccumulation in marine nematodes of several heavy metals present in contaminated sediments. We report here that nematodes, despite their short life cycle and small size, bioaccumulate significantly heavy metals. Bioaccumulation increases from deposit feeders and microalgal grazers to predators of microbes and other tiny metazoans. These results suggest that nematodes also contribute to their biomagnification along the food webs and can contribute to increase the transfer of contaminants from the sediments to larger organisms.