Bees Are Building Nests With Our Waste Plastic

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 23, 2014 @05:34PM from the making-the-best-of-things dept.

Daniel_Stuckey writes "In a paper published in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecosphere, researchers from York University and the University of Guelph in Canada explained that while plastic waste has previously been shown to have devastating impacts on the environment, less attention has been given to the resourcefulness of species in the face of their changing surroundings. "Plastic waste pervades the global landscape," they wrote. "Although adverse impacts on both species and ecosystems have been documented, there are few observations of behavioral flexibility and adaptation in species, especially insects, to increasingly plastic-rich environments.""

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Re:Reminds of this from the late George Carlin... by Truth_Quark · 2014-01-23 17:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth.
The same can't be said of seabirds and turtles.
Re:Reminds of this from the late George Carlin... by davester666 · 2014-01-23 18:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

Tell the guy behind you to wear a condom next time.

--
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Re:Not good news by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 19:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

I doubt much of our honey comes from bees in the wild and bee farmers have no reason to starting using plastic nests