Current situation of antibiotic contamination in China and the effect on plankton

In recent years, antibiotics have been continuously detected in waterbodies and thus has become an environmental problem, especially in China. However, current knowledge regarding the ecological hazards of antibiotics is mainly focusing on the induction of resistance in pathogenic microorganisms, treating antibiotic contamination as a public safety problem that seriously endangers human health, but relatively ignores its potential risk to aquatic organisms. As an important component of aquatic ecosystems, plankton play an important role in maintaining the stability of aquatic ecosystems. Meanwhile, plankton are very sensitive to environmental changes. Therefore, understanding the impact of antibiotics on plankton is the basis for assessing their ecological risk. To this end, we summarized current status of antibiotic contamination in China's aquatic environments, and analyzed the impacts of antibiotics on planktons. In addition to using metabolomics technology to reveal the negative impacts of antibiotics at the individual level, monitoring of antibiotics and plankton communities in the field needs to be strengthened in the future.