ArticleScience advances2016
Marine plastic debris emits a keystone infochemical for olfactory foraging seabirds.
Article in Science advances, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 304 citations in OpenAlex.
- Frequency of plastic occurrence varies across phylogeny but not ecology in seabirds.Biology letters · 2026Article
- Unraveling the coastal marine plastisphere archaeome.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Biofilms on microplastics across ecological systems: Formation mechanisms, community composition, environmental impacts, and ecotoxicity.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Review
- The Effects of Microplastics and Additives on Ecosystem Function, Structure, and Signaling.Global change biology · 2026Review
- Sea anemones extract tin associated with polyvinyl chloride pre-production pellets.Environmental science. Processes & impacts · 2026Article
- Alterations in characteristics of plastic ingestion and decreasing body condition in beachcast fledgling short-tailed shearwaters (Ardenna tenuirostris) at Phillip Island, Australia.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2025Article
- Can Fish Escape the Evolutionary Trap Induced by Microplastics?Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- Nanoplastics: Immune Impact, Detection, and Internalization after Human Blood Exposure by Single-Cell Mass Cytometry.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2025Article
- Using feral pigeon (Columba livia) to monitor anthropogenic debris in urban areas: a case study in Taiwan's capital city.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Social dominance influences individual susceptibility to an evolutionary trap in mosquitofish.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Localized Expression of Olfactory Receptor Genes in the Olfactory Organ of Common Minke Whales.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Hotspots of Floating Plastic Particles across the North Pacific Ocean.Environmental science & technology · 2024Article
- Morphology of nares associated with stereo-olfaction in baleen whales.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Microplastic burden in marine benthic invertebrates depends on species traits and feeding ecology within biogeographical provinces.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Short-Term Microplastic Exposure Impairs Cognition in Hermit Crabs.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- The Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health.Annals of global health · 2023Review
- Compression principle and Zipf's Law of brevity in infochemical communication.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Association of zoonotic protozoan parasites with microplastics in seawater and implications for human and wildlife health.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Interactions Between Plastic, Microbial Biofilms and Gammarus pulex: An Initial Investigation.Bulletin of environmental contamination and toxicology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Plastic debris is ingested by hundreds of species of organisms, from zooplankton to baleen whales, but how such a diversity of consumers can mistake plastic for their natural prey is largely unknown. The sensory mechanisms underlying plastic detection and consumption have rarely been examined within the context of sensory signals driving marine food web dynamics. We demonstrate experimentally that marine-seasoned microplastics produce a dimethyl sulfide (DMS) signature that is also a keystone odorant for natural trophic interactions. We further demonstrate a positive relationship between DMS responsiveness and plastic ingestion frequency using procellariiform seabirds as a model taxonomic group. Together, these results suggest that plastic debris emits the scent of a marine infochemical, creating an olfactory trap for susceptible marine wildlife.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.