plastisphere

“The plastisphere has been around for as long as plastic has existed,” Amaral-Zettler says.

Welcome to the ‘plastisphere’: the synthetic ecosystem evolving at sea Russell Thomas 2021

Like the atmosphere, magnetosphere and hydrosphere, the plastisphere is a region.

Welcome to the ‘plastisphere’: the synthetic ecosystem evolving at sea Russell Thomas 2021

“If we take the definition of an ecosystem as ‘a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment’, then this is almost certainly true of the plastisphere,” says Robyn Wright, of the pharmacology department at Dalhousie University in Canada, and author of the June study.

Welcome to the ‘plastisphere’: the synthetic ecosystem evolving at sea Russell Thomas 2021

Yet one aspect is often overlooked: the communities of microbes hosted by plastic debris, which form the ‘plastisphere’1,2.

What harmful microbes are lurking in the world’s 7 billion tonnes of plastic waste? Changchao Li 2024