Priyantini Widiyaningrum, Dyah Rini Indriyanti, Sri Ngabekti, Muhamad Luthfi Abdillah, Verdinarisma Raihan Labibah
Background and Objective: Styrofoam and polymeric foam waste are types of inorganic waste that cannot be degraded naturally. Previous research has proven that several insects from the Tenebrionidae family can degrade polystyrene and polyurethane, but it is not yet known whether the addition of these two inorganic wastes to feed will affect their survival. This research aimed to analyze the ability of Alphitobius diaperinus larvae to degrade styrofoam and polymeric foam waste and its effects on survival, feed consumption and metamorphosis rate. Materials and Methods: The research was experimentally conducted using a one-way completely randomized design. The experiment was made in five kinds of treatment, each repeated six times. Each repeat used 100 larvae of A. diaperinus namely: (P0) control treatment in the feed only; (P1) feed+styrofoam waste; (P2) feed+polymeric foam waste; (P3) without feed, styrofoam only and (P4) without feed, polymeric foam only. One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed to analyze the data on waste shrinkage and feed shrinkage. Results: The shrinkage of styrofoam waste due to the degradation of A. diaperinus larvae was higher than the shrinkage of polymeric foam, but the addition of styrofoam and polymeric foam did not affect feed consumption. Differences in food treatment affect survival, the rate of change of larvae into imago and the percentage of metamorphose. Conclusion: Overall, it was concluded that the addition of styrofoam and polymeric foam to the feed did not interfere with larval feeding activity, survival and metamorphosis ability, but the larvae were able to degrade styrofoam better than polymeric foam. © 2024 Priyantini Widiyaningrum et al.
Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Central Java, Semarang, 50229, Indonesia
