Abstract
Once in the ocean, plastics are rapidly colonized by complex microbial communities. Factors affecting the development and composition of these communities are still poorly understood. Additionally, whether there are plastic-type specific communities developing on different plastics remains enigmatic. We determined the development and succession of bacterial communities on different plastics under ambient and dim light conditions in the coastal Northern Adriatic over the course of two months using scanning electron microscopy and 16S rRNA gene analyses. Plastics used were low- and high-density polyethylene (LDPE and HDPE, respectively), polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride with two typical additives (PVC DEHP and PVC DINP). The bacterial communities developing on the plastics clustered in two groups; one group was found on PVC and the other group on all the other plastics and on glass, which was used as an inert control. Specific bacterial taxa were found on specific surfaces in essentially all stages of biofilm development and in both ambient and dim light conditions. Differences in bacterial community composition between the different plastics and light exposures were stronger after an incubation period of one week than at the later stages of the incubation. Under both ambient and dim light conditions, one part of the bacterial community was common on all plastic types, especially in later stages of the biofilm development, with families such as Flavobacteriaceae, Rhodobacteraceae, Planctomycetaceae and Phyllobacteriaceae presenting relatively high relative abundances on all surfaces. Another part of the bacterial community was plastic-type specific. The plastic-type specific fraction was variable among the different plastic types and was more abundant after one week of incubation than at later stages of the succession.
Highlights
Between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic are estimated to enter the ocean every year [1]
One set of plastic types and glass slides were exposed to the full range of solar radiation, while the other set of plastic surfaces and glass slides were held under dim light conditions
We conclude that there is no specific plastic associated bacterial community, recently coined “plastisphere”, but rather there is a part of the bacterial community, which is influenced by the characteristics of the individual plastic polymers and potentially their additives
Summary
Between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic are estimated to enter the ocean every year [1]. The microbial community composition of this biofilm is typically different from that in the ambient water [2] and might play an important role in the fate of plastics in the ocean [3]. Invasive and pathogenic species might be transported over large distances by plastic debris [7]. The composition of these plastic associated microbial communities is affected by spatial and temporal variations in environmental parameters [8, 9]. Comparative studies, following the development of the microbial biofilm on different plastic types in the same environment are scarce [9, 10]
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