ABOVE: Zophobus superworms
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Scavenger worms have crawled the Earth for 100 million years. From bone-eating worms that fed off plesiosaurs to today’s mealworms and maggots that feast on decaying organic matter in the backyard, their diets have moved with the times.
As we find ourselves in the midst a plastic pollution crisis, scientists have tested feeding so-called superworms, the larvae of Zophobas atratus, Styrofoam, a type of polystyrene. Not only were the worms able to eat the material as their sole diet, but the researchers found that their gut microbiota degraded the polystyrene and converted the complex substance into carbon dioxide, according to findings published March 15 in Science of the Total Environment.
The research builds on previous studies that found wax worms and mealworms were also able to eat plastic.
“It’s really interesting now that we’re seeing multiple small insects that can eat and degrade polystyrene, as ...
