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The first naked-eye-visible animals in exovivaria will almost certainly be insects. Insects can be a problem in trying to balance artificial closed ecosystems, as the experience of Biosphere 2 showed: ants and cockroaches proliferated and overproduced CO2.[1] If properly controlled, however, insect production of CO2 can be a good thing: plants might otherwise be starved of it, as their photosynthesis turns CO2 into oxygen. Insects wouldn't be a new solution to this problem: Victorian Era vivaria survived in part because of the (serendipitous[2]) discovery that plants in closed atmospheres transported over long distances needed the CO2 produced by the insects inside the containers.
Insects can also form multiple links in a food chain, with some insects eating others, and with any insect possibly becoming a meal itself or (through excretion while living and decomposition after death) a source of nutrients for plants and bacteria. Insects have even been proposed as a food source for human beings in space.[3]
Insects might do useful work and produce useful byproducts. Harvesting power from insect motion using piezoelectric devices has been demonstrated.[4] Producing silk on orbit might be possible: Abandoned cocoons, if matted and soaked, then frozen, could form a strong and renewable ice-composite shield against orbital debris strikes.[5],[6] "Cyborg insects" have been controlled by direct muscle stimulation and optical input.[7],[8]
Bioplastics (possibly electroactive, yielding biomimetic muscles for telebots and power-generation components),[9],[10] dyes (e.g., carmine and sealants might be derived from scale insects living parasitically on plants that have other uses in the exovivarial ecosystem.
A research question of particular interest: what are the minimum requirements for a permanent population of honeybees? Bees can pollinate, to help plants in the exovivarium reproduce. They also produce wax, which might have value as a sealant, as a lubricant, as a fuel,[11] as a strengthener/preservative for strands of fiber derived from exovivarial plants, and as a base for casting. Honey might be used to feed other animals, and even be fermented to produce a burnable fuel (alcohol). Honey could be an export product for exovivaria, a prized item in the larders of (inter)national space stations, space hotels, and expeditionary spacecraft.
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