Bertocchini and her colleagues made the discovery quite by accident, after noticing that plastic bags containing wax worms quickly became riddled with holes. (sciencedaily.com)
The team left 100 wax worms on a commercial polyethylene shopping bag for 12 hours, and the worms consumed and degraded about 92 milligrams, or roughly 3 percent, of it. (scientificamerican.com)
A previous study (doi: 10.1021 / es504038a) has shown that Plodia interpunctella wax worms, the larvae of dian mealmoths, can also digest plastic. (sciencedaily.com)