Eawag Annual Report 2022

News in brief
RESEARCH
19
Stephanie Merbt, Eawag
Nanoplastics in the aquatic food web. Plastic is chemically stable – and therefore more durable than
many of us realise. Over time, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, which in the end measure
only a few nanometres. Because such nanoplastics can only be detected in the environment with great
effort, the tiny plastic particles have remained largely unexplored until now. But now researchers at Eawag
have shown in laboratory experiments for the first time: nanoplastics remain affixed to the biofilm (in the
picture) that forms on stones in flowing water, for example, and thus affect freshwater snails that feed
on this biofilm.
Verena Lubini
Unchanged biodiversity of aquatic insects. While the diversity of
insects on land has sharply declined in recent years, Swiss watercourses
still sheltered the same number of species of aquatic insects
in 2019 as they did in 2010. This is shown by data from the
biodiversity monitoring that WSL and Eawag have analysed. In bodies
of water at medium altitude, the biodiversity of aquatic insects
has even increa sed because heat-loving insects such as the mayfly
Baetis rhodani (in the picture) spread further upstream in the
watercourses – and join the species already present there without
displacing them.
BGB
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