Word.ws English Dictionary

plastisphere

/ˈplæstɪˌsfɪəɹ/

plastisphere noun: the ecosystem on the surface of a piece of plastic (especially in a marine environment).

Noun

plastisphere (plural plastispheres)

  1. The ecosystem on the surface of a piece of plastic (especially in a marine environment).
    • ut those interested in smaller critters have been given a whole, new sphere—the plastisphere—to study.2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845, archived from the original on 14 Aug 2020
    • (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.2014, Marina Zurkow, The Petroleum Manga, punctum books, →DOI, →ISBN, page 24

Examples of plastisphere in a sentence

  • 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.2017, Martin Wagner, Scott Lambert, Freshwater Microplastics: Emerging Environmental Contaminants?, Springer, →ISBN, page 183:
  • Ocean plastics commonly develop a filmy “plastisphere” of distinct microbial communities.2022 April 3, Sabrina Imbler, “In the Ocean, It’s Snowing Microplastics”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 05...

Forms of plastisphere

pluralplastispheres

Origin of plastisphere

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

Questions about plastisphere

What does plastisphere mean?
Plastisphere means the ecosystem on the surface of a piece of plastic (especially in a marine environment).
How do you use plastisphere in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is plastisphere?
Plastisphere is a noun.
How do you pronounce plastisphere?
Plastisphere is pronounced /ˈplæstɪˌsfɪəɹ/.
What is the plural of plastisphere?
The plural of plastisphere is plastispheres.

Words near plastisphere in the dictionary

  1. plastique
  2. plastiques
  3. plastiskin
  4. plastisol
  5. plastisols
  6. plastisphere
  7. plastispheres
  8. plastivore
  9. plastivores
  10. plastivorous
  11. plastizyme

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plastisphere (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-plastisphere.wav.

Cite this entry: “plastisphere.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plastisphere. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.