Plastic associated Fungi show shared and unique taxa between the surface waters of the Western South Atlantic and the Antarctic Peninsula.. Fungi on plastics

Marine plastic pollution is increasing exponentially, and is currently considered a major problem affecting the health of the oceans. Plastics in the ocean are substrates for the attachment for a wide variety of organisms but these interactions as well as their impacts on marine environments remain unclear. In this work, we analysed fungal communities living on marine plastics from western South Atlantic (WSA) and Antarctic Peninsula (AP) using DNA metabarcoding of three molecular markers (ITS2 of the ITS region and V4 and V9 regions of 18S rRNA), to evaluate their diversity and geographic distribution. Although each marker had very different resolutions , we report a wide range of fungal taxa in the South Atlantic and Southern Plastisphere , two regions that are connected by ocean surface currents (Falkland/Malvinas Current), and presentend some groups shared and some exclusive to each region. We report fungi groups that had not yet been described adhered as part of the Plastisphere, with some being parasites of other marine species or having the potential to degrade plastic polymers. We observed a highly variable phylogenetic assemblage of predominantly saprotrophic taxa. This is the first description of the taxonomic composition of fungi from the Plastisphere of the Southern Hemisphere, and there is an urgent need to further investigate the functions and ecology of epiplastic fungi on other organisms and environments.