Species-specific effect of microplastics on fish embryos and observation of toxicity kinetics in larvae

Abstract Microplastics will definitely increase the potential health risks to humans through food chain, especially by commercial fishes. Here, we studied species-specific effect of microplastics on fish embryos and observed uptake, accumulation and elimination of microplastics in larvae. We chose three commercial fish species with different feeding types as our research objects. The results we found demonstrated that microplastics abundance in larvae was related with feeding type. At the same exposure concentration, the ingestion of microplastics in carnivores was lower than that in filter feeders and omnivores. In addition, omnivores were less able to remove microplastics than filter feeders. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to compared the differences of microplastics ingested in fishes with feeding types under laboratory conditions, and we believe that the findings will be valid evidence to explain species-specific effect of microplastics on fishes.