Abstract
Plastics become rapidly colonized by microbes when released into marine environments. This microbial community-the Plastisphere-has recently sparked a multitude of scientific inquiries and generated a breadth of knowledge, which we bring together in this review. Besides providing a better understanding of community composition and biofilm development in marine ecosystems, we critically discuss current research on plastic biodegradation and the identification of potentially pathogenic "hitchhikers" in the Plastisphere. The Plastisphere is at the interface between the plastic and its surrounding milieu, and thus drives every interaction that this synthetic material has with its environment, from ecotoxicity and new links in marine food webs to the fate of the plastics in the water column. We conclude that research so far has not shown Plastisphere communities to starkly differ from microbial communities on other inert surfaces, which is particularly true for mature biofilm assemblages. Furthermore, despite progress that has been made in this field, we recognize that it is time to take research on plastic-Plastisphere-environment interactions a step further by identifying present gaps in our knowledge and offering our perspective on key aspects to be addressed by future studies: (I) better physical characterization of marine biofilms, (II) inclusion of relevant controls, (III) study of different successional stages, (IV) use of environmentally relevant concentrations of biofouled microplastics, and (V) prioritization of gaining a mechanistic and functional understanding of Plastisphere communities.
Highlights
It is difficult to imagine living in the pre-“Plastic Era” where plastics were unknown to society, food was not packaged in films, and toys were made out of wood or metal
As the Plastisphere community composition and its role in plastic biodegradation has been discussed in recent reviews,[18−22] we focus here on other aspects that we believe merit closer consideration, such as microbial community succession and biofilm-mediated interactions, and we offer our perspective with suggestions for future research in this field
While Pinto et al.[38] measured the plasticizers before and after incubation, they did not report a decrease in concentrations and, did not incubate unplasticized PVC, and while we showed that oxidized polymer chains likely shed off weathered PE when in solution, we did not measure the concentration of these shorter polymer chains and oxidized subproducts.[37]
Summary
It is difficult to imagine living in the pre-“Plastic Era” where plastics were unknown to society, food was not packaged in films, and toys were made out of wood or metal. One of the most fascinating consequences of buoyant marine plastic debris is the appearance of a completely new niche within marine ecosystems, where microbial primary producers known to be pioneers in plastic colonization, i.e., cyanobacteria,[48] diatoms,[12] and algae,[68] can grow on a surface that remains at the forefront of the sunlit ocean and live in meso- or even eutrophic conditions due to the buildup of nutrients within the biofilm, despite being in an ultraoligotrophic environment This new niche may have profound and unexplored consequences in marine food webs as the web can be “bypassed” when larger organisms feed directly on these microbial This new niche may have profound and unexplored consequences in marine food webs as the web can be “bypassed” when larger organisms feed directly on these microbial aggregations on plastics (Figure 7)
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