4 ms·
Such changes could be millions of years in the making
by interludead 2y ago
Such changes could be millions of years in the making
- baanist 2y agoI think it has already started¹. 1: https://neurosciencenews.com/microplastics-brain-health-27794/ https://neurosciencenews.com/microplastics-brain-health-2779...
- bamboozled 2y agoWhat does this have to do with ants evolving to eat plastic ?
- 1over137 2y agoMaybe he means the mass extinction has already started (due to plastic pollution).
- madaxe_again 2y agoEvolution, like geology, tends to happen in fits and starts - yes, it happens over very long timescales as a general phenomenon, but significant changes tend to happen in very short timescales, before then annealing over a population and finding equilibrium over a longer timescale. Take lactose tolerance in humans, for instance. That happened almost spontaneously in Northern European populations 6kYa, as it was such an advantageous trait for herdsmen, but then spread slowly - to the extent that it is still not a ubiquitous trait of sapiens. Many such examples, human and otherwise. I expect there are already plastic fixing bacteria out there, but they have not yet proliferated or optimised the trait. Should other food sources dwindle for whatever reason, this trait will become ubiquitous, rapidly, as competing populations die off.
- sfn42 2y agoIf there are bacteria that can feed on plastic (not saying there aren't), wouldn't they have essentially no competition and thus thrive in plastic polluted environments?
- bamboozled 2y agoThey are bacteria, they convert plastic to energy for fu and then get eaten by other bacteria, they don’t turn into plastic.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- madaxe_again 2y agoOnly if plastic is a better energy source than other energy sources they can already consume. I mean, if we had an obligate plastivore then yes, what you describe would happen, but I guess we haven’t - yet.
- lazide 2y agoThere are plastic eating bacteria [https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounders/plastic-eating-bacteria-natures-recyclers https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounde...]. Human cells can also (mostly) function anaerobically (aka in low-oxygen environments). It’s terribly inefficient though, and we can only do it for limited periods of time before something bad starts to happen to the overall organism. So we prefer oxygen, and as long as we have oxygen rich environments, we’re never going to get that much better at being anaerobic eh?
- bluGill 2y agoDo those exist? Plastic is everywhere in small quantities, but so are lots of other things bacteria can feed on in those environments. Those other things also have the advantage of being part of a eco system meaning that more of it grows in ways bacteria can exploit.
- miah_ 2y agoThe film 'Crimes of the future' from David Cronenberg talks about this, though the subject matter is pollution and plastic instead of milk.
- dotnet00 2y agoI'm reminded of a documentary I saw a few years ago, where they discussed ways our modern cities are already starting to affect the evolution of animals that live in them. One example was of a species of birds in a specific area starting to develop shorter wings with higher maneuverability, because the ones with larger ones were more likely to get hit by vehicles: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/22/175054275/birds-evolve-shorter-wings-to-escape-traffic-crush https://www.npr.org/2013/03/22/175054275/birds-evolve-shorte...