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Marine Plastisphere
Summary
Plastic waste in the ocean isn't just floating debris — it's covered in living microbial communities, sometimes called the "plastisphere," that can include harmful bacteria and can carry pollutants through the marine food chain. This review pulls together current research on how these microbes grow on plastic and interact with ocean chemicals, highlighting concerns that this could help spread disease-causing germs and contaminants to seafood and, ultimately, to people. The authors note that scientists still don't fully understand how these microbial hitchhikers form or exactly how risky they are, so more research is needed before we can accurately assess the health risks.
The global prevalence of plastic debris underscores the urgent need to explore microbial communities thriving on plastic surfaces and the microbial ecology and health impacts of the “plastisphere”. However, little is known about the marine plastisphere. This chapter seeks to provide a broad insight into this microhabitat, especially its microbiome and plastic–microbe interactions, which greatly interest global researchers. Besides providing a better understanding of community composition and biofilm development in the marine plastisphere, we critically discuss current research on the biogeochemical cycles, marine pollution, identification of potential pathogenic “hitchhikers”, and ecotoxicological effects of the marine plastisphere. As an active interface between plastics and their surrounding environments, the plastisphere mediates microplastics’ interactions with their associated chemicals, influencing the ecotoxicities, fates, and trophic transfers of contaminants in marine food webs. Despite these advances, key knowledge gaps remain, including the need for better characterization of multistage development in the natural marine plastisphere, accurate quantification and mechanistic understanding of the plastisphere’s effects on elemental cycles, and integrated tools for microbial resource exploration and functional assessment. Addressing these gaps will improve our understanding of the plastisphere’s ecology and inform strategies to mitigate its ecological and health risks.