Plastics become rapidly colonized by microbes when released into marine environments. This microbial community—the Plastisphere—has recently sparked a multitude of scientific inquiries and generated a breadth of knowledge, which we bring together in this review. Besides providing a better understanding of community composition and biofilm development in marine ecosystems, we critically discuss current research on plastic biodegradation and the identification of potentially pathogenic “hitchhikers” in the Plastisphere. The Plastisphere is at the interface between the plastic and its surrounding milieu, and thus drives every interaction that this synthetic material has with its environment, from ecotoxicity and new links in marine food webs to the fate of the plastics in the water column. We conclude that research so far has not shown Plastisphere communities to starkly differ from microbial communities on other inert surfaces, which is particularly true for mature biofilm assemblages. Furthermore, despite progress that has been made in this field, we recognize that it is time to take research on plastic–Plastisphere–environment interactions a step further by identifying present gaps in our knowledge and offering our perspective on key aspects to be addressed by future studies: (I) better physical characterization of marine biofilms, (II) inclusion of relevant controls, (III) study of different successional stages, (IV) use of environmentally relevant concentrations of biofouled microplastics, and (V) prioritization of gaining a mechanistic and functional understanding of Plastisphere communities.

中文翻译：

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海洋塑料碎片：微生物定殖的新表面。

当塑料释放到海洋环境中时，就会迅速被微生物定殖。这个微生物群落-Plastisphere-最近引发了许多科学询问，并产生了广泛的知识，我们在这次审查中将这些知识汇总在一起。除了提供对海洋生态系统中群落组成和生物膜发展的更好理解之外，我们还批判性地讨论了有关塑料生物降解的最新研究以及塑浆圈中潜在致病的“旅行者”的识别。Plastisphere位于塑料与其周围环境之间的界面处，因此推动了这种合成材料与其环境之间的每一次相互作用，从生态毒性和海洋食物网中的新联系到水柱中塑料的命运。我们得出的结论是，到目前为止，研究还没有显示出Plastisphere群落与其他惰性表面上的微生物群落有明显不同，这对于成熟的生物膜组合尤其如此。此外，尽管在该领域已取得进展，但我们认识到，现在是时候通过确定我们目前的知识差距并提出我们对未来将要解决的关键方面的观点，进一步开展塑料-塑料-塑料-环境相互作用的研究。研究：（I）更好地表征海洋生物膜，（II）包括相关控制，（III）不同演替阶段的研究，（IV）使用环境相关浓度的生物污染微塑料，以及（V）优先考虑获得机理以及对Plastisphere社区的功能了解。