Food web rewiring drives long-term compositional differences and late-stressor interactions at the community level

In this blogpost, Francesco Polazzo talks about how pesticides can cause a drastic change in the organisation and strength of interactions of aquatic food webs. Particularly, after pesticide exposure, changes in the strength of trophic interactions seem to be driving long-lasting effects in community structure. When multiple pesticides act together, they modify both food web structure and interaction’s strength, causing late-stage non-additive effects between stressors. 

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Finding needles in haystacks – Detection of TiO2 nanoparticles in soil

In a recent publication from the Environmental and Soil Chemistry group, we present a method enabling us to detect anthropogenic TiO2 nanoparticles in soil despite the presence of a high natural background. The method relies of colloidal extraction and trace elements ratio using ICP-MS. 

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Most microplastics in rocky intertidal snails stem from paint

In this blogpost, Sonja Ehlers reports how microplastic loads in rocky intertidal snails from the North Sea, Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean are consistent across space and time. The majority of the contained microplastics consisted of paint chips that likely derived from ships or maritime equipment. Such paint chips can contain toxic antifouling substances and heavy metals.

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Internship: Short Term Scientific Missions in COST-Action PERIAMAR

Short Term Scientific Missions is being organized by COST-Action PERIAMAR to help scientists contribute to ERA while allowing them to learn new techniques, gain access to specific data, instruments and methods not available in their own institutions/ organizations.

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Updated article: Insects in nature reserves are contaminated with a cocktail of pesticides

Update 02.03.2022 – Here is a link to a new video of the study on insects contaminated with a mix of pesticides in nature reserves.

Video 1: A new video of the study on insects contaminated with a mix of pesticides in nature reserves. (Credits: C. Brühl)

In this blog post Carsten Brühl explains the background and findings of their paper on pesticide residues measured on insect samples from nature conservation areas in Germany published in Scientific reports.

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Why coffee makes you alert after a heavy lunch: Mixture neurotoxicity explained through the lens of zebrafish behaviour

In this blogpost, Fola Ogungbemi talks about the effects of mixtures of neuroactive substances. Risk assessment of chemicals is usually conducted for individual chemicals whereas mixtures of chemicals occur in the environment. Considering that neuroactive chemicals are a group of contaminants that dominate the environment, it is then imperative to understand the effects of mixtures of neuroactive substances.

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