title: Effectiveness of emetics to study plastic ingestion by Leach's Storm-petrels (Oceanodroma leucorhoa).
abstract: Most plastic ingestion studies rely on dissection of dead birds, which are found opportunistically, and may be biased. We used Leach's Storm-petrels (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) in Newfoundland to study the effect of dose volume, and the efficacy of emesis using syrup of ipecac as an emetic. Ipecac is a safe method of non-lethally sampling stomach contents, and recovered all ingested plastic. Almost half the storm-petrels sampled had ingested plastic, ranging from 0 to 17 pieces, and weighing 0.2-16.9 mg. Using the Ecological Quality Objective for Northern Fulmars, adjusted for storm-petrels smaller size, 43% exceeded the threshold of 0.0077 g of plastic. Many adult seabirds offload plastic to their offspring, so storm-petrel chicks likely experience a higher plastic burden than their parents. The ability to study plastic ingestion non-lethally allows researchers to move from opportunistic and haphazard sampling to hypothesis-driven studies on a wider range of taxa and age classes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, and Environment Canada, 11 Innovation Boulevard, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 3H5, Canada. alex.bond@usask.ca
authors.forename: Alexander L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Bond
authors.forename: Jennifer L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Lavers
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds; D004639:Emetics / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D005766:Gastrointestinal Contents; D010969:Plastics / Q000032:analysis*; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D004639:Emetics; D010969:Plastics; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical