engleski

The plastic Diet: What is happening to sea turtles?

Marine debris is a growing problem in our consumer society. Plastics in the marine environment can affect marine organisms in various ways: entanglement ; ingestion ; transfer of toxicants and invasive species ; and accumulation and destruction of benthic communities. Sea turtles are opportunistic carnivores and will eat almost anything, including plastic debris. Most of the ingestions do not have an immediate lethal effect and do not cause physical damage to the gut itself, but the sole ingestion of plastic debris reduces the stomach/digestive system volume, which could affect the fitness of individual turtles and whole populations. I use a mechanistic model to explore the possible consequences of plastic ingestion on growth, maturation and reproduction of loggerhead turtles.

loggerhead turtle; plastc ingestion; mathematical modeling

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