TY  - JOUR
A1  - Arias Andrés, María de Jesús
A1  - Kettner, Marie Therese
A1  - Miki, Takeshi
A1  - Grossart, Hans-Peter
T1  - Microplastics: New substrates for heterotrophic activity contribute to altering organic matter cycles in aquatic ecosystems
JF  - The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man
N2  - Heterotrophic microbes with the capability to process considerable amounts of organic matter can colonize microplastic particles (MP) in aquatic ecosystems. Weather colonization of microorganisms on MP will alter ecological niche and functioning of microbial communities remains still unanswered. Therefore, we compared the functional diversity of biofilms on microplastics when incubated in three lakes in northeastern Germany differing in trophy and limnological features. For all lakes, we compared heterotrophic activities of MP biofilms with those of microorganisms in the surrounding water by using Biolog (R) EcoPlates and assessed their oxygen consumption in microcosm assays with and without MP. The present study found that the total biofilm biomass was higher in the oligo-mesotrophic and dystrophic lakes than in the eutrophic lake. In all lakes, functional diversity profiles of MP biofilms consistently differed from those in the surrounding water. However, solely in the oligo-mesotrophic lake MP biofilms had a higher functional richness compared to the ambient water. These results demonstrate that the functionality and hence the ecological role of MP-associated microbial communities are context-dependent, i.e. different environments lead to substantial changes in biomass build up and heterotrophic activities of MP biofilms. We propose that MP surfaces act as new niches for aquatic microorganisms and that the constantly increasing MP pollution has the potential to globally impact carbon dynamics of pelagic environments by altering heterotrophic activities. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
KW  - Microplastics
KW  - Microorganisms
KW  - Biofilms
KW  - Total biomass
KW  - Heterotrophic activity
KW  - Functional diversity
KW  - Multi-functionality index
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.199
SN  - 0048-9697
SN  - 1879-1026
VL  - 635
SP  - 1152
EP  - 1159
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -