Aquatic plastisphere: Interactions between plastics and biofilms

Became of the high production rates, iow .ecycling rates, and pool waste manegement of plc sties, an increasing amount of plastic is entuing the aquatic environment, where it can provict new icologicai niches for microbial communities and form a so call-d plastisphere. Recent studies have focesad on the one way impact of plastic substrata or biofilm conununities. However, our understanding of the two way interactions between plastics and biofilms is still limited. This review first summarizes the fmmation process and the co-occunence network analysis of the aquatic plastisphere to comprehensively illustrate the succession pattern of biolilm communities and the potential consistency between keystone taxa and specific environmental behavior of die plastisphere rtutheimore, this review sheds light on mutual interactions between plastics and biofilms. Plastic properties, environmental conditions, and colonization time affect biofilm development Meanwhile, the biofilm conununities, in nun, influence the environmental behaviors of plastics, including transport, contaminant accumulation, and especially the fragmentation and degradation of plastics. Based on a systematic literature review and crossreferencing from these disciplines, the cunent research focus, and future challenges in exploring aquatic plastisphere development and biofilm-plastic interactions are proposed.