Abstract
It is now indisputable that plastics are ubiquitous and problematic in ecosystems globally. Many suggestions have been made about the role that biofilms colonizing plastics in the environment—termed the “Plastisphere”—may play in the transportation and ecological impact of these plastics. By collecting and re-analyzing all raw 16S rRNA gene sequencing and metadata from 2,229 samples within 35 studies, we have performed the first meta-analysis of the Plastisphere in marine, freshwater, other aquatic (e.g., brackish or aquaculture) and terrestrial environments. We show that random forest models can be trained to differentiate between groupings of environmental factors as well as aspects of study design, but—crucially—also between plastics when compared with control biofilms and between different plastic types and community successional stages. Our meta-analysis confirms that potentially biodegrading Plastisphere members, the hydrocarbonoclastic Oceanospirillales and Alteromonadales are consistently more abundant in plastic than control biofilm samples across multiple studies and environments. This indicates the predilection of these organisms for plastics and confirms the urgent need for their ability to biodegrade plastics to be comprehensively tested. We also identified key knowledge gaps that should be addressed by future studies.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 789-806 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | ISME Journal |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements RJW gratefully acknowledges funding from Waitrose & Partners as part of the Association of Commonwealth Universities Blue Charter Program and thanks members of the Christie-Oleza (University of Warwick, UK, and University of the Balearic Islands, Spain) and Langille labs (Dalhousie University, Canada) for insightful discussions and advice. MGIL and TRW acknowledge support from NSERC Discovery Grants 2016–05039 and 2018–04119, respectively. We would also like to thank the authors of all studies that are included in this analysis for making their data accessible, as well as those that responded to requests for additional data or clarification on aspects of their methodology.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- Microbiology
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Meta-Analysis
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't