Canadian bee researchers have documented two species of urban bees using tiny bits of plastic to construct their nests.
Writing in the journal Ecosphere, the researchers contend that the bees' use of plastic bags and plastic building materials highlights their resourcefulness and flexibility to adapt to a landscape being shaped by human influence.
A plastic-rich environment can certainly have adverse impacts on wildlife, but this research offers some of the first evidence that insects are adapting to a plastic world.
"Plastic waste pervades the global landscape," said lead study author Scott MacIvor. "We found two solitary bee species using plastic in place of natural nest building materials, which suggests innovative use of common urban materials."
The bees aren't exactly making nests out of Legos, but they have been shown to occasionally replace natural nest-building materials such as plant resins, with a man-made replacement, which in some instances appears as a gray, chewing gum-like material in the the bee's nests.
After examining the gray goo, the researchers learned that it was polyurethane, which is commonly used as a sealant.
The bees were using equivalent of caulking material to build sections of their nests called brood cells where larvae are raised, the researchers said.
Another species of bee was observed using pieces of polyethylene-based plastic bags to construct its brood cells. "The glossy plastic replaced almost one-quarter of the cut leaves normally used to build each cell," the researchers said.
The teeth marks on the plastic bags indicated that the bees chewed it differently than they would the leaves typically used for nest-building, which, incidentally, were nearby and abundant for the bees in the study, which suggests that the bees used the plastic intentionally.
"The plastic materials had been gathered by the bees, and then worked - chewed up and spit out like gum - to form something new that they could use," said Andrew Moore, supervisor of analytical microscopy at Laboratory Services at University of Gueleph
For both of the plastic-using bee species, their larvae developed normally in the plastic-based brooding cells, and emerged free of parasites.
"The novel use of plastics in the nests of bees could reflect the ecologically adaptive traits necessary for survival in an increasingly human-dominated environment," MacIvor said.