Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic the project meeting in Homberg (Ohm) had to be cancelled. Nevertheless, the project partners could exchange their ideas in phone conferences and planned a novel study, which will be carried out this summer. The experiment will be conducted in a so called mesocosm, an outdoor model-ecosystem, located at the facilities of the Research Center Neu-Ulrichstein (Mesocosm GmbH).

PhD student Marie-Theres Mueller and her colleagues from the University of Bielefeld, in coorperation with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), have published new results on the effects of polystyrene on nematodes. The study was published in the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology and shows that an intake of microscopic polysyrene beads can negatively impact the reproduction and food availability of the roundworm C. elegans.

Contaminations by microplastics and pharmaceuticals are causing severe problems in waste water treatment plants, due to their potential hazard for aquatic organisms. Karla Ernst und Hannah Kuß, master students of biotechnology at the WWU, have therefore invited experts from science and industry to discuss this topic and to present them innovative biotechnological solutions developed by students. The attendees were Dr. Jens Reiber (Wesseling GmbH), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jens Haberkamp (Constructional Engineering, FH Münster) and Dipl.-Ing. Manfred Rummler (Ingenieurbüro Rummler und Hartmann). MikroPlaTaS was represented by Prof. Dr. Bodo Philipp.

The project partners met in Bielefeld to conduct a mid-term evaluation of the project and to take up the detailed planning for a common large-scale project in Neu-Ulrichstein in 2020.

MikroPlaTaS presented four talks and three posters at the annual conferences of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland and the German Limnological Society. Topics included the sinking behaviour of microplastics in stratified lakes, as well as the effects of microparticles on the population growth of nematodes, the effects of plastics on the nutritional value of biofilms for snails, and the ingestion of microplastic by rotifers. The respective sessions on plastic in the environment were organised by project members and were well attended.

At the status conference on the 9th and 10th of April first results from the 20 joint projects of the research focus were presented in Berlin.

On 10. and 11. 12. 2018 a project meeting of MikroPlaTaS took place at the Institute of Landscape Ecology (ILÖK) in Münster.

Presentations were given on the ongoing projects of the doctoral students and scientific questions and data from the field study were discussed.

With contributions from the UFZ and WWU, the project MikroPlaTaS was represented at two scientific conferences last week: The "Umwelt2018" from 09. - 12.09.2018 in Münster and the annual meeting of the German Society for Limnology e.V. (DGL) in Kamp-Lintfort from 10.-14.09.2018.

There, the poster "Biofilme auf Plastikpartikeln und deren Nährwert für das Makrozoobenthos" (Biofilms on plastic particles and their nutritional value for the macrozoobenthos) of Diana Michler-Kozma and Rense Jongsma was honored by the vote of the conference participants as one of the five best posters with the poster price of the DGL.