Epiplastic microhabitats for epibenthic organisms: a new inland water frontier for diatoms

Plastic pollution is widespread in each type of ecosystems. However, the colonization events of microorganisms on plastics seem to be neglected in inland waters. Therefore, in this study we analyze the possible colonization on the surface (hereafter epiplastic microhabitats) of two typology of plastic supports by diatom community. Specifically, we located 20 supports in expanded polystyrene and 20 in polyethylene terephthalate both floating and dipped (~ 1 m) in a central Italian shallow water pond, in order to evaluate the diachronic colonization of diatoms from November 2019 to August 2020. Our result showed the tendency in colonizing both epiplastic microhabitats without significant differences in number of species; additionally, depth does not appear to affect the number of species. As regard the temporal colonization, the number of species tends to increase over time from autumn-winter to spring-summer in both types of epiplastic microhabitats and depth. Instead, increase in dominance of some species over time has been demonstrated: only a few species keep a high number of individuals compared to the others; therefore, the number of individuals within the species is not uniformly distributed. These results suggest the tendency of diatom community to colonize plastic supports in lentic waters, and this evidence can be very important because artificial supports can increase the surface available for the settlement of the algae community with an increase of productivity and the colonization of new communities of different taxa. Further studies are mandatory to investigate the possible effects on the epiplastic community and the ecological implications in freshwater environments.