Team > M.Sc. Simona Mondellini

Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences
Chair Animal Ecology I

PhD Student

PhD Project: Effects of biodegradable microplastics and water soluble synthetic polymers on freshwater invertebrates

This project regards the evaluation of the potential ecotoxicological effects that could be induced on freshwater invertebrates by the exposure to microplastics (MP) from biodegradable polymers and to water soluble synthetic polymers (WSSP).
Biodegradable polymers have been presented as a potential solution to the problem represented by plastic pollution. Even though, so far, the particles detected in the environment have predominantly been represented by commodity polymers, the demand, and so the environmental concentrations, of biodegradable polymers is increasing. Hence, data concerning their potential ecotoxicological effects is highly desirable for a reliable risk assessment.
WSSP are currently employed in a variety of different fields (e.g. pharmaceutical, biomedical, dietary, water treatments). Nevertheless, information about their effects, fate and prevalence in the environment are still scarce.
Hence, in this project acute and long-term exposures on freshwater invertebrates (e.g. Daphnia magna, Lumbriculus variegatus) are conducted to assess alterations on life history parameters, metabolism and stress of the employed model organisms.

This PhD project is part of LimnoPlast-ITN.

Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences
Chair Animal Ecology I

Master in Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology
PhD Candidate Animal Ecology | Supervisors Prof. Dr. Christian Laforsch, Dr. Martin Löder

PhD Project: LimnoPlast | Effects of biodegradable microplastics and water soluble synthetic polymers on freshwater invertebrates

Research Interests: Animal Ecology, Ecotoxicology, Biodiversity, Animal Behaviour

Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences
Chair Animal Ecology I

Publications

2024

Simona Mondellini, Michael Schwarzer, Matthias Völkl, Julia Jasinski, Valérie Jérôme, Thomas Scheibel, Christian Laforsch, Ruth Freitag: Size dependent uptake and trophic transfer of polystyrene microplastics in unicellular freshwater eukaryotes. In: Science of the Total Environment, 929 (2024). - .
doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172470

2022

Simona Mondellini, Matthias Schott, Martin G. J. Löder, Seema Agarwal, Andreas Greiner, Christian Laforsch: Beyond microplastics : Water soluble synthetic polymers exert sublethal adverse effects in the freshwater cladoceran Daphnia magna. In: Science of the Total Environment, 847 (2022). - .
doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157608

2020

Christian Laforsch, Anja Ramsperger, Simona Mondellini, Tamara S. Galloway: Microplastics : A Novel Suite of Environmental Contaminants but Present for Decades. In: Franz-Xaver Reichl, Michael Schwenk (Hrsg.): Regulatory Toxicology. - Berlin : Springer, 2020. - S. 1-26.
doi:10.1007/978-3-642-36206-4_138-1

Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences
Chair Animal Ecology I

M.Sc. Simona Mondellini
PhD Student

Chair Animal Ecology I
Building NWI, Room 5.0 01 39
University of Bayreuth
Universitätsstr. 30
95440 Bayreuth
Germany

Phone: +49 (0) 921 55 2648

E-mail: simona.mondellini@uni-bayreuth.de
Homepage: limnoplast - ITN
ORCID: 0000-0003-1561-063X
ResearchGate: Simona Mondellini