Long-term exposure of a free-living freshwater micro- and meiobenthos community to microplastic mixtures in microcosms.

Microplastics in a wide range of shapes and polymer types (MPs; <5 mm) accumulate in freshwater sediments, where they may pose an environmental threat to sediment-dwelling micro- and meiobenthos. To date, the effects of MPs on those organisms have mostly been studied in single-species experiments exposed to high particle concentrations. By contrast, there have been few investigations of the effects resulting from the long-term exposure of natural communities to environmental relevant MPs. This research gap was addressed in the present study. A microcosm experiment was conducted to examine the impact of a mixture of MPs of varying polymer composition, shape, and size (50% polystyrene (PS) beads: 1-μm diameter; 37% polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fragments: 32 × 21 μm in size, and 13% polyamide (PA) fibers 104 × 15 μm in size; % based on the total particle number) provided at two concentrations (low: 4.11 × 10

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Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.