- Scientists at the University of Queensland, Australia found that the superworm or superworm Zophobas morio, can live only by eating polystyrene or better known as styrofoam.
- Researchers found that these super worms can survive only on a diet of polystyrene, which is a variety of products we use every day, from cups to Styrofoam packaging.
- This superworm grows to 5 cm and is raised as a food source for reptiles and birds. The worm’s ability to process plastic suggests that plastic is very efficiently broken down in the creature’s digestive tract. They are basically like eating machines.
- The point of the research is to discover that the worm’s unique gut microbiome is likely to hold the key to developing the chemical process for breaking down these plastic materials.
Packaging products, disposable tableware, polystyrene is the most common form of plastic we encounter. Recycling these plastics is not easy and most of them end up in landfills or in the oceans which are very threatening to the life of marine animals.
Scientists at the University of Queensland, Australia found that superworm or super worm Zophobas the dyingcan live only by eating polystyrene or better known as styrofoam.
Chris Rinke, who led the research mentioned that waxworm small and mealworm aka the Hong Kong caterpillar has a good reputation for eating plastic. This research has been published in Jurnal Microbiology Societyissue June 9, 2022.
Researchers found that these super worms can survive only on a diet of polystyrene, which is a variety of products we use every day, from cups to packaging. styrofoam.
Superworm it grows to 5 cm and is bred as a food source for reptiles and birds, or even for humans in countries like Thailand and Mexico.
“The worm’s ability to process plastic shows that plastic is very efficiently broken down in the creature’s digestive tract. They are basically like eating machines,” he said, quoted from Science alert.
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To investigate how the gut microbiome superworm reacting to a diet of pure plastic, the researchers sampled 135 worms into three groups. The first group was given only wheat bran, the second was fed only soft polystyrene, and the third was given nothing.
All worms were monitored for cannibalistic activity, while worms that were not fed anything were isolated from each other. As a result, the bran-fed larvae were significantly healthier than their plastic-fed or unfed counterparts.
They more than doubled their body weight over the three weeks that followed. After that, some worms from each group were set aside to grow into beetles.
Nine out of 10 worms fed bran managed to grow into beetles and maintain the most diverse gut microbiome of the three groups. Meanwhile, the larvae that were fed with plastic did not grow well. However, they are still heavier than starving worms, and two-thirds of them grow into beetles.
“We confirmed that the superworms could survive on a single polystyrene diet, and even gain weight. This shows that worms can obtain energy from eating polystyrene,” he said Scientific America.
Though superworm those fed with polystyrene completed their life cycle, pupae and then fully developed adults, tests revealing a loss of microbial diversity in their gut and potential pathogens.
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These findings suggest that although insects can survive polystyreneit is not nutritious food and has an impact on their health.
“It is clear that polystyrene is a bad food for larvae. However, it appears that they can extract at least some of the energy from the material in the plastic,” Rinke said.
According to him, this happened probably because of the symbiotic relationship between superworm and gut bacteria. Worms essentially tear plastic apart so bacteria can break it down and break it down into smaller molecules, which may be easier to digest. Or perhaps, it can someday be recycled to make new plastic.
Furthermore, the team used a technique called metagenomics to analyze gut microbial communities and discover which gene-coding enzymes are involved in degrading plastics.
One way to use these findings is to provide food scraps or agricultural bioproducts for superworms to share polystyrene.
“This could be a way to improve worm health and to deal with the large amounts of food waste in Western countries,” Rinke said.
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Knowing exactly which bacterial enzymes these gut microbes use to break down polystyrene is invaluable, in order to replicate the process on a large scale in the future. The new study identified these enzymes and required sequencing the genome of the organism in the worm’s gut.
“Using metagenomics, we were actually able to characterize all the genes in the digestive microbiome. Previous studies of other insects have not been so comprehensive, focusing on only one or two possible gut bacteria or enzymes,” according to Rinke.
He and his colleagues are not suggesting superworms are simply released into landfills or polluted landscapes to munch on piles of plastic. The point of the research is to discover that the worm’s unique gut microbiome is likely to hold the key to developing the chemical process for breaking down these plastic materials.
Plastic waste produced by humans has polluted almost the entire planet, from around our homes, to the north pole, even at the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches. This material takes a very long time, up to millions of years to completely decompose.
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