Role of traveling microplastics as bacterial carriers based on spatial and temporal dynamics of bacterial communities.

Microplastics (MPs) are considered as distinct substrates for bacterial colonization, they can carry bacterial communities to travel around environments. The bacterial communities on traveling MPs prefer to be gradually consistent with those on local MPs that were always in the same environment, and this process of change in the bacterial communities on traveling MPs was called 'localization'. However, the dynamics of localization process and their influencing factors are still unclear.

Field based studies on aging characteristics of pristine and aged plastic debris in a coastal environment, Bohai Bay, China.

The coastal environment has become a sink of plastic due to the strong impact of plastic waste input from land. Plastics entering a coastal environment usually experience aging on land. However, few previous studies used aged plastics to study plastic aging in seawater, and the aging characteristics of aged plastics in a coastal environment are unclear.