The Impact of Microplastics on Daphnia Reproductive Strategy

Microplastics are extremely small pieces of plastic debris that pollute the environment and have become a threat to ecosystems. An increase in global plastic production has increased the amount of microplastics in aquatic environments such as those of the Daphnia, a tiny, semi transparent freshwater crustacean that changes its reproductive strategy based on environmental stress. We theorized that a higher concentration of microplastics would result in increased incidence of sexually produced eggs since microplastics are an environmental trigger. To test how different quantities of microplastic affect reproductive strategies in daphnia, groups of daphnia were placed in varying concentrations of microplastics over a period of one week. We report that daphnia exposed to microplastics reproduce more. They also switched reproductive strategies to reflect a higher-stress environment. This indicates that microplastics have a stressful impact on the daphnia population.