Honeybees as active samplers for microplastics
Honeybees
13. Climate action
Microplastics
11. Sustainability
0211 other engineering and technologies
Environmental monitoring
02 engineering and technology
Biología y Biomedicina / Biología
01 natural sciences
Biosampling
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
DOI:
10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144481
Publication Date:
2021-01-07T22:34:19Z
AUTHORS (6)
ABSTRACT
Microplastics are ubiquitous and their sampling is a difficult task. Honeybees interact with the environment inside their foraging range and take pollutants with them. In this work, we demonstrated for the first time that worker bees can act as active samplers of microplastics. We collected honeybees from apiaries located in the centre of Copenhagen and from nearby semiurban and rural areas. We showed the presence of microplastics in all sampled locations mostly in the form of fragments (52%) and fibres (38%) with average equivalent diameter of 64 ± 39 μm for fibres and 234 ± 156 μm for fragments. The highest load corresponded to urban apiaries, but comparable number of microplastics was found in hives from suburban and rural areas, which can be explained by the presence of urban settlements inside the foraging range of worker bees and to the easy dispersion of small microplastics by wind. Micro-FTIR analysis confirmed the presence of thirteen synthetic polymers, the most frequently of which was polyester followed by polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride. Our results demonstrated the presence of microplastics attached to the body of the honeybees and opens a new research pathway to their use as active biosamplers for anthropogenic pollution.
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