With the growth of the fashion and textile industries into the twenty-first century, associated pollution has become pervasive. Fibre-based microplastics are the most common types of plastics recovered from aquatic ecosystems encouraging the move towards organic fibre usage. Often marketed as biodegradable and ‘environmentally friendly’, organic textile fibres are seen as less harmful, but their impacts are understudied. Here,...

Plastic pollution is now a ubiquitous feature of freshwater systems and the majority of this is fibrous. Here, we test the effects of plastic and cellulose-based fibres (polyester, cotton, and bamboo from commercial clothing) on fish host-parasite interactions using a freshwater fish host-parasite model system (guppy Poecilia reticulata - Gyrodactylus turnbulli ). For uninfected fish, polyester exposure was associated with sig...