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.
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.
Might have been even faster if world insect populations weren’t crashing.
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
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.
I expected to see microbes here first. Insects have a slower reproduction cycle, so evolution should take longer.
Well, it’s the gut bacteria of those insects doing the breaking down, so it is still microbes. Just microbes hosted by worms.
There are adapted ground bacteria in tar pits, eating tar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_pit#Living_organisms
Yeah – I wasn’t expecting nature to make plastics biodegradable sooner than we did.