Ecological risks in a ‘plastic’ world: A threat to biological diversity?

Microplastics pollution is predicted to increase in the coming decades, raising concerns about its effects on living organisms. Although of microplastics individual organisms have been extensively studied, communities, biological diversity, and ecosystems remain underexplored. This paper reviews published literature concerning how affect ecosystem processes. abundance some taxa but decrease other taxa, indicating trade-offs among altered microbial community composition both natural environment animals’ gut. The alteration by highly conserved across taxonomic ranks, while alpha diversity microbiota often reduced or increased, depending dose environmental conditions, suggesting potential threats biodiversity. Biogeochemical cycles, greenhouse gas fluxes, atmospheric chemistry, can also be pollution. These findings suggest that may impact U.N. Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) improve atmospheric, soil, water quality sustaining