In the Anthropocene, increasing pervasive plastic pollution is creating a new environmental compartment, the plastisphere. How the plastisphere affects microbial communities and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) is an issue of global concern. Although this has been studied in aquatic ecosystems, our understanding of plastisphere microbiota in soil ecosystems remains poor. Here, we investigated plastisphere microbiota and ARGs of four types of microplastics (MPs) from diverse soil environments, and revealed effects of manure, temperature, and moisture on them. Our results showed that the MPs select for microbial communities in the plastisphere, and that these plastisphere communities are involved in diverse metabolic pathways, indicating that they could drive diverse ecological processes in the soil ecosystem. The relationship within plastisphere bacterial zero-radius operational taxonomic units (zOTUs) was predominantly positive, and neutral processes appeared to dominate community assembly. However, deterministic processes were more important in explaining the variance in ARGs in plastispheres. A range of potential pathogens and ARGs were detected in the plastisphere, which were enriched compared to the soil but varied across MPs and soil types. We further found that the addition of manure and elevation of soil temperature and moisture all enhance ARGs in plastispheres, and potential pathogens increase with soil moisture. These results suggested that plastispheres are habitats in which an increased potential pathogen abundance is spatially co-located with an increased abundance of ARGs under global change. Our findings provided new insights into the community ecology of the microbiome and antibiotic resistome of the soil plastisphere.

在人类世，日益普遍的塑料污染正在创造一个新的环境区域，即塑料圈。塑料球如何影响微生物群落和抗生素抗性基因 (ARG) 是全球关注的问题。尽管这已经在水生生态系统中进行了研究，但我们对土壤生态系统中的塑料圈微生物群的了解仍然很薄弱。在这里，我们研究了来自不同土壤环境的四种微塑料 (MPs) 的塑料球微生物群和 ARGs，并揭示了肥料、温度和水分对它们的影响。我们的研究结果表明，MPs 选择了塑料圈中的微生物群落，并且这些塑料圈群落参与了多种代谢途径，表明它们可以驱动土壤生态系统中的多种生态过程。塑料球细菌零半径操作分类单位 (zOTU) 内的关系主要是积极的，中性过程似乎主导群落组装。然而，确定性过程在解释塑料球中 ARG 的变化方面更为重要。在塑料球中检测到了一系列潜在的病原体和 ARG，与土壤相比，这些病原体和 ARGs 丰富，但因 MPs 和土壤类型而异。我们进一步发现，肥料的添加和土壤温度和湿度的升高都会增强塑料球中的 ARGs，并且潜在的病原体随着土壤湿度的增加而增加。这些结果表明，塑料球是在全球变化下潜在病原体丰度增加与 ARGs 丰度增加在空间上共同存在的栖息地。