Microplastics Weaken the Adaptability of Microbial Communities to Heat

Microplastics (MPs) pollution is widespread in various environments and threating the ecological stability, while rising temperature as a global climate factor is affecting ecological vulnerability. Biological adaptability to environment changes determines the collapse and evolution of ecological processes to stressors. However, the roles of MPs pollution in the adaptability of microbial community to rising temperature remain largely unknown. In this study, microbial communities were collected from six rivers. After 7 days of MPs domestication experiment, the microbial community underwent the thermal adaptation experiment, and repeating for three cycles to investigate how temperature influences the physiological state and metabolic characteristics of microorganisms under MPs interference, and whether these effects are correlated with changes in microbial community dynamics.