plastisphere
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From plastic + -sphere, analogous to biosphere. Coined by American biologist Linda Amaral-Zettler.[1]
Noun
[edit]plastisphere (plural plastispheres)
- (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[2], volume 408, number 8845:
- Welcome to the plastisphere
- 2014, Marina Zurkow, The Petroleum Manga, punctum books, , →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
[edit]- ^ Sabrina Imbler (2022 April 3) “In the Ocean, It’s Snowing Microplastics”, in The New York Times[1], →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.
Further reading
[edit]
plastisphere on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
