Spatio-temporal succession of plastisphere communities and their potentials for plastic degradation in freshwater ecosystems

Plastics in the environment provide a new and unique habitat for microorganisms - known as the plastisphere. The capacity of bacterial succession within the plastisphere in biodegrading both non-biodegradable plastics and biodegradable plastics within freshwater ecosystems is still not clear enough to understand the underpinning mechanism. Here, we investigated plastisphere community composition variation and its capacity to biodegrade three types of plastics, i.e., polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) and polylactic acid+polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate (PLA+PBAT, BP blends herein) for four-time periods (15, 30, 45, and 80 days) in three freshwater systems. 112 samples were studies based on DNA extraction and 16S rRNA sequencing.