ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Toxicology, Pollution and the Environment
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1589648
This article is part of the Research TopicLife in the "Plastisphere": Linking the Biodiversity of Microbial Communities to the Risk of Micro-(nano-)plastics and Related New ContaminantsView all 3 articles
Nutrient availability modulates the effects of plastic leachates on the growth and community dynamics of free-living freshwater bacteria
Provisionally accepted
- 1Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- 2Department of Chemical Sciences, School of Sciences, University of Padua, Padua, Veneto, Italy
- 3Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 4University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
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On the one hand, plastic pollution poses a significant and increasing threat to aquatic ecosystems, i.e. contaminating water resources and posing health risks for humans and the environment. On the other hand, plastic leachates can also stimulate microbial growth and activities, impacting biochemical cycles in aquatic ecosystems. Synthetic polymers and their leachates vary in their chemical composition and thus differently impact microand higher organisms. This study aims to assess: i) how different synthetic polymer leachates affect free-living aquatic bacteria, and ii) how these effects vary at high vs. low nutrient conditions. Therefore, leachates were extracted from five synthetic polymers, i.e. low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), starchpolylactic acid (starch-PLA), and tire rubber via incubation in ultrapure water at UV radiation. Free-living (<5.0 µm) microbial communities of Lake Stechlin, Germany, were exposed to these leachates, and changes in total microbial growth and community composition were analysed using dose-response models. Nutrient availability resulted in different effects on total microbial growth and community composition of the tested synthetic polymers. For instance, PP leachates caused significant community shifts with increased total microbial growth rates at low nutrient conditions, but not at high nutrient conditions, whilst starch-PLA leachates led to community shifts at both nutrient conditions, but didn't impact total microbial growth. These results highlight the importance of leachate quality and nutrient availability for understanding the effects of leachates on microbial growth and community dynamics. Our findings imply that synthetic polymer pollution has the potential to alter microbial loop functioning and hence biochemical cycles of aquatic ecosystems.
Keywords: Lake bacterial communities, Synthetic Polymers, biodegradable plastics, nutrient enrichment, bacterial growth and community composition
Received: 07 Mar 2025; Accepted: 23 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schubert, Monikh, Yang and Grossart. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hans-Peter Grossart, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
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