There's been an exciting new discovery in the fight against plastic pollution: mealworm larvae that are capable of consuming polystyrene. They join the ranks of a small group of insects that have been found to be capable of breaking the polluting plastic down, though this is the first time that an insect species native to Africa has been found to do this.
  • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    13 days ago

    I’ve wondered how far out we are from microorganisms and insects adapting to remove one of the biggest utilities of plastics, their durability. Crazy to think it’s taking less than a century for these organisms to begin to adapt.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      241·
      13 days ago

      Might have been even faster if world insect populations weren’t crashing.

      • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
        17·
        13 days ago

        You could also draw a conclusion that plastic eating insects are evolving faster because of less competition and abundant plastic. It’s amazing how life can be both fragile and resilient at the same time

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
          16·
          13 days ago

          Life is incredibly resilient. It’s been through way worse than us and it’s done fine.

          The right conditions for any single species to keep existing in a safe and comfortable place, like the friendly green-blue paradise we were born on, are heartbreakingly fragile.

    • Hamartiogonic
      51·
      13 days ago

      I expected to see microbes here first. Insects have a slower reproduction cycle, so evolution should take longer.

      • LwL@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        12 days ago

        Well, it’s the gut bacteria of those insects doing the breaking down, so it is still microbes. Just microbes hosted by worms.

  • lordnikon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    13 days ago

    More like when there is an abundance of something in an environment. Something will adapt to consume it evolution at its finest.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      13 days ago

      Yep. If a material can be converted to energy there’s something out there that’s either already eating it or is only a few mutations away.

  • Pilferjinx@lemmy.world
    21·
    13 days ago

    It wasn’t in the article, but is the styrofoam converted into something else as excrement? Or do they just crap out micro plastic?

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
      24·
      13 days ago

      I clicked through to the Nature article, and it sounds like about half the plastic gets used for making energy and exhaled as carbon dioxide, with the other half getting pooped out as microplastics. I’d call that progress. It’s not the end goal, but it’s a good tool with some potential, is I think what they are saying.

  • zout@fedia.io
    10·
    13 days ago

    I can’t find it in the article, but I assume this is the same as all the other plastic eating organisms; They can eat plastic under specific circumstances, but would rather not. What is in the article; they can only survive on polystyrene if it is mixed with other food and nutrients.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
      181·
      13 days ago

      Not true.

      We found that mealworms on the polystyrene-bran diet survived at higher rates than those fed on polystyrene alone.

      While the polystyrene-only diet did support the mealworms’ survival, they didn’t have enough nutrition to make them efficient in breaking down polystyrene.

      Many of the ones fed only polystyrene for a month did survive, they just fared poorly as with any organism that’s eating only one substance for an entire month. But they did live, which is pretty impressive.

      They have gut bacteria that can break down polystyrene for nutrition. They just can’t eat only polystyrene and nothing else and thrive. It’s mostly an area of research because they want to use the bacteria in processing waste, not that the mealworms are going to be the answer as-is.

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        11·
        13 days ago

        We’re going to develop or find some efficient life form to break down plastics quickly. Solve our waste problem. And it’s going to get loose into the wild and start breaking down plastics everywhere, uncontrollably. Straight out of Larry Niven’s Ringworld series (theirs was a superconductor-eating bug).

        Probably not though, that’s just science fiction that never happens in reality. The nylon-eating bacteria that naturally evolved found long ago in waste areas never broke out to destroy all nylon. So at least there’s an example of it not happening.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
          10·
          13 days ago

          I’m confident that it will happen, these things just take time. There’s enough energy floating around bound up in plastic polymers, and the chemistry is simple enough, that something will learn to make use of it. 100 years is just way too short in evolutionary time for it to happen on a large scale.

        • zout@fedia.io
          2·
          12 days ago

          Maybe we should be happy it doesn’t happen, breaking down all plastics which are currently everywhere would probably result in massive CO2 emissions. That’s why I’m always sceptical when these kind of articles appear; it gives some people an excuse to say the overuse of plastics isn’t an issue.

        • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
          1·
          13 days ago

          And it’s going to get loose into the wild and start breaking down plastics everywhere, uncontrollably.

          That’s fine, really. Eco problem solved and we need alternatives to plastic (made of oil) in the next few tens of years anyway.

    • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
      2·
      13 days ago

      Do they even process it or is the goal just to have plastic waste but with extra steps?

      Oh, they can break it down.

  • Aermis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    12 days ago

    I had a foam insulation board that I used to insulate my chicken coop. The chickens pecked at and ate a bunch of it before I noticed and got it covered up.