Analysis of 16S rRNA amplicon data illuminates the major role of environment in determining the marine plastisphere microbial communities

Abstract

Microplastics (MPs) are a potential threat to the marine environment and its associated ecosystem functions. Earlier investigations revealed that the microbiome plays a crucial role in deciding the fate of MPs in the environment. Further studies also highlighted the influences of environment and polymer types on the plastisphere microbiome. Nevertheless, the major factor that determines the plastisphere microbiome remains elusive. Thus, we examined the publicly available marine plastisphere data generated from polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and polystyrene (PS), collected from three different locations to identify the importance of environment and/or polymer types in shaping the microbiome. The beta diversity analyses showed a clear distinction between samples collected from different locations. The PERMANOVA results illustrated a significant influence of environment and sample type (control/PE/PP/PS) on the microbial communities. However, the influence of sample type on microbial diversity was not significant (P-value > 0.05) when the control samples were removed from the dataset but the environment remained a significant factor (P-value < 0.05). Further, the differential abundance analyses explicitly showed the abundance of many bacterial taxa to be significantly influenced (adjusted P-value < 0.05) by the locations rather than the polymer types. The validation analysis also supports the findings. Thus, this study suggests that both the surrounding environment and polymer types determine the microbial communities on marine MPs, but the role of the environment in shaping the microbial composition is greater than that of polymer types.

Keywords: Amplicon data; Marine environment; Microbiome; Microplastics; Plastisphere; Polymer.