Fig. 5: Effects of chemical and ecological continuous moderators on PFAS trophic magnification factors.

The relationship between trophic magnification of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and carbon chain length (A), trophic position of the food web’s baseline organism (B), trophic position of the food web’s top predator (C), the number of trophic levels in the food web (D), food webs’ latitude (E), and publication year of the included studies in the meta-analysis (F). The uni-moderator fitted models are depicted as thick black lines, with their 95% confidence intervals shown as red dashed lines and 95% prediction intervals represented by dotted black lines. Light grey circles represent the individual effect sizes (k), and the size of each circle reflects its precision (inverse of standard error). The number of effect sizes is represented by ‘k’, while the number in parentheses indicates the number of studies. The TMF is on the natural logarithm scale to enhance visual readability of results. R² values represent the proportion of variance explained only by the fixed effects in the model (marginal R²). Source data are provided as a Source data file.