plastisphere

English

Etymology

plastic +‎ -sphere, analogous to biosphere. Coined by American biologist Linda Amaral-Zettler.[1]

Noun

plastisphere (plural plastispheres)

  1. (ecology) The ecosystem on the surface of a piece of plastic (especially in a marine environment).
    • 2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist‎, volume 408, number 8845:
      Welcome to the plastisphere
    • 2014, Marina Zurkow, The Petroleum Manga, punctum books, →DOI, →ISBN, page 24:
      (The Plastisphere is one of the many industrial-natural ecosystems that characterize the Anthropocene.) Cleaning ocean plastics, even if it were technologically possible on a scale that would make a difference, would disrupt and destroy the life we would be trying to save in the first place.
    • 2017, Martin Wagner, Scott Lambert, Freshwater Microplastics: Emerging Environmental Contaminants?, Springer, →ISBN, page 183:
      Freshwater and marine habitats share a number of features, but there are also differences between them that may affect the development and activities of plastisphere consortia.

References
  1. Sabrina Imbler (2022 April 3) “In the Ocean, It’s Snowing Microplastics”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:
    Plastic in the ocean is constantly being degraded; even something as big and buoyant as a milk jug will eventually shed and splinter into microplastics. These plastics develop biofilms of distinct microbial communities — the “plastisphere,” said Linda Amaral-Zettler, a scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, who coined the term.

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