Plastic waste is just about everywhere on the planet at this point, and some animals have been found to adapt to our litterbug ways. In Argentina, scientists have made the first report of a bee’s nest made only out of plastic pieces.
At the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018, Mariana Allasino of the National Agricultural Technology Institute in Argentina, and her team were studying chicory pollinators in San Juan. At the edges of the crops, they put out 63 trap nests made of wood with holes where bees can use material to build brood cells. These are similar in shape to the tubes in honeycomb and hold larvae while they develop.
The team checked the trap nests monthly, finding only three nests. Two had brood cells made of petals and mud and were created by a species called Megachile jenseni. They confirmed this when five adults of the species emerged from the cells.
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The other nest was made entirely of two types of plastic – thin, blue strips the consistency of disposable shopping bags, and white pieces that were a bit thicker. In this nest, one brood cell had dead larva in it, one was empty and may have contained an unidentified adult that emerged, and one cell was unfinished.
“I find it rather sad, but interesting. It begs for a choice test in an enclosure to determine why this plastic might be more appealing or adaptive than use of natural materials,” says Theresa Pitts-Singer at the US Department of Agriculture. She says it will be important to determine whether plastic lining in brood cells can be harmful to the bees, as more trapped moisture may lead to higher pathogen levels, and plastic may be toxic in some way as it breaks down.
Though they’re unsure of the species that built this nest, the team says it may have been Megachile rotundata, also known as the alfafa leaf-cutting bee. There are previous reports of this species foraging plastic for building nests, though in that case it did not make up all of the bees’ nest-building materials.
The team says this may be a sign that bees can adapt to human disturbances in their habitats, making use of human-made materials in places where natural vegetation may be less abundant such as crop fields where herbicide can cut down on the numbers of leaves and petals.
Apidologie
