Plastic habitats: algal biofilms on photic and aphotic plastics

Smith, I.L., Stanton, T. ORCID: 0000-0001-9097-8739 and Law, A., 2021. Plastic habitats: algal biofilms on photic and aphotic plastics. Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters, 2: 100038. ISSN 2666-9110

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Abstract

Plastic pollution is abundant in aquatic environments worldwide and many of its detrimental impacts are well documented, but it also represents a novel substrate available to a diversity of organisms. Biofilms – assemblages of bacteria, algae, and fungi – colonise hard surfaces in aquatic environments. They are key agents in biogeochemical cycling and are a food source for grazing organisms, representing a keystone aquatic community, and are known to influence the fate of plastic pollution in aquatic environments. In one of the most temporally thorough assessments of biofilm development on freshwater plastics, here we report on the evolution of algal biofilm assemblages on three plastic polymers (Low Density Polyethylene, Polypropylene, and Polyethylene Terephthalate) over six weeks in the photic and aphotic zones of a freshwater reservoir in Staffordshire, UK. Significant differences were found between diatom assemblages on plastics in the photic and aphotic zones, and between diatom assemblages quantified on weeks 2, 4 and 6 of the study, but total algal photosynthetic pigment concentrations did not vary significantly between polymers in either zone. Scanning Electron Microscopy indicates that degradation of polymer surfaces occurs within six weeks in the aphotic zone, with potential implications for plastic fragmentation and microplastic generation.

Item Type: Journal article
Publication Title: Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters
Creators: Smith, I.L., Stanton, T. and Law, A.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: November 2021
Volume: 2
ISSN: 2666-9110
Identifiers:
NumberType
10.1016/j.hazl.2021.100038DOI
1464613Other
Rights: ©2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Divisions: Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by: Laura Ward
Date Added: 01 Sep 2021 13:55
Last Modified: 01 Sep 2021 13:55
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/44097

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