Due to their ubiquitous presence, size and characteristics as ability to adsorb pollutants, microplastics are hypothesized as causing a major impact on smaller organisms, such as plankton. Despite this, there is a need to determine whether these impacts just relate to the environmental presence of the materials or their effects on biological processes. Therefore, we aimed to 1) review current research on plankton and microplastics; 2) compare field and laboratory experimental findings, and 3) identify knowledge gaps. The systematic review showed that 70% of the 147 relevant scientific publications were from laboratory studies and microplastics interactions with plankton were recorded in 88 taxa. Field study publications were relatively scarce and the characteristics of microplastics collected in the field were very different from those used in laboratory experiments thereby limiting the comparison between studies. Our systematic review highlighted knowledge gaps in: 1) the number of field studies; 2) the non-comparability between laboratory and field conditions, and 3) the low diversity of plankton species studied. Furthermore, this review indicated that while there are many studies on contamination by microplastics, the effects of this contamination (i.e., pollution per se) have been less well-studied, especially in the field at population, community, and ecosystem levels.

由于它们的普遍存在，其大小和吸附污染物的能力等特性，据推测，微塑料对较小的生物体（例如浮游生物）产生了重大影响。尽管如此，仍需要确定这些影响是否仅与材料的环境存在或它们对生物过程的影响有关。因此，我们的目的是：1）综述浮游生物和微塑料的最新研究；2）比较现场和实验室的实验结果，以及3）识别知识差距。系统评价显示，在147个相关科学出版物中，有70％来自实验室研究，并且在88个分类单元中记录了微塑料与浮游生物的相互作用。实地研究的出版物相对稀少，并且实地收集的微塑料的特征与实验室实验所用的特征大不相同，从而限制了研究之间的比较。我们的系统评价突出了以下方面的知识差距：1）实地研究的数量；2）实验室和野外条件之间的不可比性，以及3）研究的浮游生物种类的多样性低。此外，该评论表明，尽管有许多关于微塑料污染的研究，但这种污染的影响（即污染本身）的研究较少，尤其是在人口，社区和生态系统层面的领域。