Life Cycle Effects of PFAS on Mussel Development: Towards Realistic Predictions of Pollution Impacts on Populations

Chemicals like PFAS are a major threat to marine life. They can impair the development and survival of benthic invertebrates such as mussels – vital organisms for healthy coastal ecosystems. Early life stages are most sensitive to stress and the bottleneck for population growth and survival. However, we poorly understand how chemicals affect key processes during larval life. Also, chronic exposure, transgenerational effects and climate are rarely considered. This hampers our understanding and prediction of pollution impacts. To improve this, FLAME takes a holistic approach that includes experiments covering the full larval life cycle and going across generations, chronic exposure, experiments across climate zones, and dispersal models that incorporate the experimental data. The project will be pivotal to reaching an ecologically relevant evaluation of PFAS impacts on marine benthic invertebrates. This is important for assessing ecosystem functioning under increasing pollution.