Abstract
Plastic debris pervades in our oceans and freshwater systems and the potential ecosystem-level impacts of this anthropogenic litter require urgent evaluation. Microbes readily colonize aquatic plastic debris and members of these biofilm communities are speculated to include pathogenic, toxic, invasive or plastic degrading-species. The influence of plastic-colonizing microorganisms on the fate of plastic debris is largely unknown, as is the role of plastic in selecting for unique microbial communities. This work aimed to characterize microbial biofilm communities colonizing single-use poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) drinking bottles, determine their plastic-specificity in contrast with seawater and glass-colonizing communities, and identify seasonal and geographical influences on the communities. A substrate recruitment experiment was established in which PET bottles were deployed for 5–6 weeks at three stations in the North Sea in three different seasons. The structure and composition of the PET-colonizing bacterial/archaeal and eukaryotic communities varied with season and station. Abundant PET-colonizing taxa belonged to the phylum Bacteroidetes (e.g. Flavobacteriaceae, Cryomorphaceae, Saprospiraceae—all known to degrade complex carbon substrates) and diatoms (e.g. Coscinodiscophytina, Bacillariophytina). The PET-colonizing microbial communities differed significantly from free-living communities, but from particle-associated (>3 μm) communities or those inhabiting glass substrates. These data suggest that microbial community assembly on plastics is driven by conventional marine biofilm processes, with the plastic surface serving as raft for attachment, rather than selecting for recruitment of plastic-specific microbial colonizers. A small proportion of taxa, notably, members of the Cryomorphaceae and Alcanivoraceae, were significantly discriminant of PET but not glass surfaces, conjuring the possibility that these groups may directly interact with the PET substrate. Future research is required to investigate microscale functional interactions at the plastic surface.
Highlights
Plastic pollution was first reported in remote, offshore basins of the north Atlantic ocean over forty years ago [1, 2], twenty years after the introduction of plastic to the consumer market [3]
The present study examines the influence of season, geographic location, seawater, and substrate material type on the microbial colonization of single-use plastic drinking bottles composed of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) deployed at multiple stations in the North Sea
Plastic-attached communities were different from ‘free-living’ seawater communities, but not distinct from particle-associated or glass-attached communities. This is the first time this observation has been reported, as previous studies have restricted their analyses to comparisons between marine plastic biofilms and free-living seawater communities only [26,27,36]
Summary
Plastic pollution was first reported in remote, offshore basins of the north Atlantic ocean over forty years ago [1, 2], twenty years after the introduction of plastic to the consumer market [3]. Research has shown that plastic debris is ubiquitous in aquatic habitats [4]. Plastic pollution is established in marine sediments [7] and in some of the planet’s largest [8,9,10] and most remote [11] reservoirs of freshwater. As the spatial distribution of marine plastic debris continues to be better resolved, research is increasingly focused on assessing its effects on environmental and public health. One critical and underexplored knowledge gap is the role that rapidly colonizing plastic biofilm communities play in the impact of plastic debris on the marine ecosystem [22,23,24]
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