Accumulation and dynamics of Microplastics in bivalves: a bi-national assessment

• Grant number: 24/07277-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2024
• Effective date (End): November 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Oceanography - Biological Oceanography
• Principal Investigator: Ítalo Braga de Castro
• Grantee: Victor Vasques Ribeiro
• Supervisor: Carlos Sanz Lazaro
• Host Institution: Instituto do Mar (IMar). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Baixada Santista. Santos , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Universidad de Alicante (UA), Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/08669-6 - Bivalve molluscs as contemporary and historical sentinels of microplastic contamination, BP.DR

Abstract

Microplastic contamination is ubiquitous across global environmental matrices, especially in coastal and marine zones, reaching up to remote, pristine and protected areas. Monitoring microplastic contamination and pollution is of extreme importance to fully understand, mitigate and manage their impacts. Several species are used as sentinels of microplastic contamination, reflecting the environmental conditions. In this sense, bivalves are widely used as sentinels due to their filtration-feeding behavior, sessile and/or with low movement rates, ability to accumulate and retain particles, high physiological response to contamination, wide geographic distribution, etc. More than 70 bivalve species were used since 2014, in more than 100 field studies performed in more than 30 countries. Brazil and Spain are among the most polluted countries by microplastics. However, there is a gap of knowledge in the microplastics accumulation dynamics by bivalves. Experimental studies conducted in laboratories fail to properly emulate the environmental conditions. A smart solution is to apply transplantation assessments, in which individuals are sampled from low contamination levels areas and caged into high contamination level areas. Few studies applied such assessments using bivalves. None was done in Spain or the Latin America. Based on this scenario, we had performed the such assessment in Brazil using mussels and oysters (FAPESP nº 2022/08669-6). Considering the scarcity of caging assessments in the world, and its equivalent elevated MPs pollution levels, we have decided to ask for this BEPE to perform a similar caging assessment in Spain. Therefore, the present study aims to evaluate the dynamic of accumulation of microplastics by bivalves in a bi-national assessment, contributing to transfer relevant technology used in assessment of environmental quality to Brazil through doctoral training.