User:Yakushima/sandbox

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. 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 ) 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.

Insects might do useful work and produce useful byproducts. Harvesting power from insect motion using  piezoelectric devices has been demonstrated. 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. , "Cyborg insects" have been controlled by direct muscle stimulation and optical input. ,

Bioplastics (possibly electroactive, yielding  biomimetic muscles for telebots and power-generation components),,  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, 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.