ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Pollution
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1645179
This article is part of the Research TopicFrom Micro to Macro: Interactions of Marine Biota with Plastic PollutionView all 4 articles
Are fish larvae contaminated before they start eating? First evidence of microplastic contamination in the yolk-sac of wild fish larvae
Provisionally accepted
- 1Interdisciplinary Center for Marine and Environmental Research, University of Porto, Matosinhos, Portugal
- 2Universidade do Porto Instituto de Ciencias Biomedicas Abel Salazar, Porto, Portugal
- 3University of Hull, Hull, United Kingdom
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Microplastics (MPs) ingestion in wild fish during the early stages remains a field with scarce information and contradictory findings in laboratory studies. This study evaluated whether MPs contamination of larval fish stages begins at the commencement of the exogenous feeding phase and whether different species and ontogenetic development stages exhibit different profiles of MPs contamination. We assessed, for the first time, the presence of MPs in the larval stages of two species: the European sardine (Sardina pilchardus), a marine migrant species, and the common goby (Pomatoschistus microps), an estuarine resident species, inhabiting the Douro Estuary (NW Portugal). In both species, MPs were found even in the yolk-sac stage, when fish larvae still have endogenous feeding and do not actively prey on other organisms. This illustrates that fish larvae are already contaminated at a stage where the mouth is still not fully open, further indicating that MPs were not actively ingested. MPs contamination did not vary between species or throughout the ontogenetic development stages, showing similar levels of contamination and MPs contamination profiles. This novel study provides relevant insights into MPs contamination processes, showing that MPs contamination can occur early in the life cycle of fishes, from hatching onwards. Furthermore, the presence of MPs in fish larvae appears to be more dependent on the MPs that are in higher abundance in the surrounding water than fish larvae preferences or ecological guild, physical characteristics, or even the ontogenetic developmental stage.
Keywords: Microplastics, fish larvae, ontogenetic development stages, Sardina pilchardus, Pomatochistus microps
Received: 11 Jun 2025; Accepted: 08 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rodrigues, Espincho, Elliott, Almeida and Ramos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sabrina M. Rodrigues, Interdisciplinary Center for Marine and Environmental Research, University of Porto, Matosinhos, Portugal
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