ArticleScientific reports2021
Diet-driven mercury contamination is associated with polar bear gut microbiota.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Metallic Contaminants and Osteoporosis: a Review of the Gut-Bone Axis.Biological trace element research · 2026Review
- Timing Is Everything: The Effect of Exposure to Pollution on Wildlife Gut Microbiota Is Contingent on Season.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Differential gut microbiome composition in three-spined stickleback populations with contrasting levels of mercury accumulation.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Contaminant Biomagnification in Polar Bears: Interindividual Differences, Dietary Intake Rate, and the Gut Microbiome.Environmental science & technology · 2024Article
- Serum Virome of Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears (Conservation physiology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The gut microbiota may modulate the disposition and toxicity of environmental contaminants within a host but, conversely, contaminants may also impact gut bacteria. Such contaminant-gut microbial connections, which could lead to alteration of host health, remain poorly known and are rarely studied in free-ranging wildlife. The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is a long-lived, wide-ranging apex predator that feeds on a variety of high trophic position seal and cetacean species and, as such, is exposed to among the highest levels of biomagnifying contaminants of all Arctic species. Here, we investigate associations between mercury (THg; a key Arctic contaminant), diet, and the diversity and composition of the gut microbiota of polar bears inhabiting the southern Beaufort Sea, while accounting for host sex, age class and body condition. Bacterial diversity was negatively associated with seal consumption and mercury, a pattern seen for both Shannon and Inverse Simpson alpha diversity indices (adjusted R
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Registered trials
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