#wax worm

[mindblowingscience]

'Humble' worm saliva can break down tough plastic

Could the solution to plastic pollution be found inside the mouths of tiny wax worms?

One of the worst forms of plastic pollution may have met its match in the saliva of a humble worm.

Spanish researchers say they've discovered chemicals in the wax worm's drool that break down polyethylene, a tough and durable material.

The researchers say that one hour's exposure to the saliva degrades the plastic as much as years of weathering.

They hope the breakthrough will lead to new natural approaches to deal with plastic pollution.

They've discovered two enzymes in the liquid that can degrade polyethylene at room temperatures and believe it's the first time that such an effective agent has been found in nature.

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[wtf-fun-factss]

Wax worms, which have evolved to live in bee hives, produce an enzyme that allows them to eat and break down one of the most common plastics (polyethylene) into organic compounds. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/04/wax-worms-eat-plastic-polyethylene-trash-pollution-cleanup/

[a-blog-for-a-burger]

She chëw

[isaacsfishingcorner]

I just couldn’t get any of the river crappie to hit today, so I switched back over to a little pond and found a few willing to hit

[npr]

People around the world use more than a trillion plastic bags every year. They're made of a notoriously resilient kind of plastic called polyethylene that can take decades to break down.

But the humble wax worm may hold the key to biodegrading them.

It was an accidental discovery. Scientist and beekeeper Federica Bertocchini was frustrated to find that her beehives were infested with the caterpillar larvae of Galleria mellonella, commonly known as a wax worm.

Bertocchini, who works at the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria in Spain, tells NPR that she was cleaning out the hive and put the worm-infested parts in a plastic bag.

But shortly afterward, she noticed that "they were all crawling around my place and the plastic bag was riddled with holes."

The Lowly Wax Worm May Hold The Key To Biodegrading Plastic

Photo: Wayne Boo/USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab

[toadiebeans]

And now the lump babies await a plastic bucket snacky free-for-all.

[mindblowingscience]

Scientists have discovered a worm that eats plastic bags and leave behind antifreeze

Polyethylene: not your average meal

The wax worm, a caterpillar typically used for fishing bait and known for damaging beehives by eating their wax comb, has now been observed munching on a different material: plastic bags.

Scientist Federica Bertocchini of the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria in Spain first noticed the wax worms’ plastic-eating skills when she was cleaning up a wax worm infestation in one of the beehives she keeps at home. She put the worms in a plastic bag, tied it closed, and put the bag in a room of her house while she finished cleaning the hive. When she returned to the room, “they were everywhere,” Bertocchini said in a statement. They’d escaped by chewing their way out of the bag, and fast.

“This project began there and then,” she said. In a paper published in Current Biology on Monday (April 24), Bertocchini and her colleagues described 100 wax worms chewing through a polyethylene shopping bag—the kind that people discard at a rate of 1 trillion per year globally—in around 40 minutes. After 12 hours, the bag was significantly shredded.

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[isaacsfishingcorner]

I cannot wait for the days where I don’t have to wear gloves while fishing