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The world is fighting against plastic waste that threatens to pollute the Earth and contribute to climate change. Now, scientists say that plastic-eating mosquitoes are responsible for introducing waste into our ecosystems and polluting our environment.
A new study conducted at the University of Reading discovered small plastic fragments inside flying insects that lay eggs in the water, such as mosquitoes. This is how plastic waste water is transferred from larvae to adult mosquitoes.
The team working on the study, which was published in the journal Letters of biology, found that larvae consume microplastics from polluted water, and that the waste remains in the metamorphosis stage and reaches the non-feeder pupae. Eventually, they become plastic-eating mosquitoes.
This process is particularly dangerous for ecosystems around the world and can put the major food chains at risk. Birds and bats feed on flying insects such as mosquitoes, which means that plastic can spread to other animals, causing even greater danger.
The lead author of the study, University of Reading professor Amanda Callaghan, said in a statement: "Recent attention has been given to plastics that pollute our oceans, but this study reveals that is also in our sky. This is an eye opening study, which showed us for the first time that microplastics can cross many stages of life in flying insects, allowing them to contaminate all kinds of living things that would not normally not exposed to these insects. It's a shocking reality that plastic contaminates almost every corner of the environment and its ecosystems. "
Plastic consuming mosquitoes consume microplastics that are found in the environment because of pollution; it can take hundreds of years for these plastics to degrade in nature. In addition, scientists are discovering that this problem is spreading around the world, both in the oceans and in freshwater. Plastic waste is also released into the water as a residue of many cosmetic products. After that, marine animals consume them and the plastic continues to be transferred to other creatures across the food chain.
However, this study is the first to confirm that plastic can be transmitted at different stages of an animal's life, for example from larvae to adult mosquitoes, by moving water in a terrestrial environment.
PhD student Rana Al-Jaibachi wanted to test this study on plastic-eating mosquitoes by providing microbeads of fluorescent plastic to mosquitoes. Using microscopes, she discovered that the microplastic was transferred by larval feeding, transformed into a non-feeder pupa, and eventually became an adult insect with microplastics.
Humans not at risk
"The problem is that they are bioaccumulative," Callaghan told Newsweek. "So, the more animals there are in the food chain that contain plastics, they will be eaten by something else, which is eaten by something else, so there will be a point where there will be plastic charges quite high. "
According to a study published in 2015 in the journal, with more than 8 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year Science, the amount of plastic in the terrestrial creatures could be added.
Callaghan also told Newsweek that mosquitoes that eat plants can not transfer the plastic to humans, unlike the diseases they transmit with their sting, such as malaria. The only way the plastic can be transferred to humans is if it ends up in the salivary glands of their mouths. However, the team found no trace of plastic in the heads of these insects.
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