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Post by MikeH on Jan 1, 2012 11:25:04 GMT -5
my contention is that the extinctions that are going on in Australia were inevitable sooner or later, just as is the extinction of all species. I do not exclude Homo sapiens from that statement. The Sixth Great Extinction although the first that has been self-induced. Regards, Mike
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Post by castanea on Jan 1, 2012 11:26:54 GMT -5
Great topic for discussion! When I see a biologist do a calculation that includes the benefits that a new species brings to an ecosystem, then I'll be open to re-considering my position. But as long as new=bad, and change=evil, I'm perfectly content with people, animals, and weather introducing new species all over everywhere. For what it's worth... Every species on a volcanic island is an invasive species, and nearly every one of them are doomed to extinction when the island sinks back into the sea. Sure enough... The primary economy, namely the natural world, makes every man-made economy on Earth look like a small little toy. And that is the crux of my annoyance. The vast majority of those who complain about "invasives", and that includes people who claim to be scientists, are complaining that the new species are not native, as if that were an inherent evil, or a crime. Yet I note that these people have no intention of returning to where their own species originated. Nor do they have any intention of ceasing to grow non native species that they enjoy eating.
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Post by castanea on Jan 1, 2012 11:37:10 GMT -5
I think the basic problem is the idea that we are actually able to control the movement of species. People have the mistaken belief that we as a human race do what we do out of choice, when in fact we behave exactly as all other species do, utilize our habitat to the limits of the available carrying capacity. Just like bacteria in a petri dish. Most of the so called "invasives" came along for the ride, and have caused considerable disruption to a variety of ecosystems. We can wring our hands and lament what has been lost, but I assure you that Nature does not. ... Not to disrespect Templeton and his views but my contention is that the extinctions that are going on in Australia were inevitable sooner or later, just as is the extinction of all species. I do not exclude Homo sapiens from that statement. Should we lament the loss of all of the equally unique and bizarre marsupials, birds, Rodents of Unusual Size(I am not kidding), ground sloths, glyptodonts, and other things no one will ever know about when the Panama isthmus formed and the Great American Interchange occured? Uncounted fascinating species went extinct, all kinds of species "invaded". But we had nothing to do with it. Species will move, we are almost certainly going to continue to facilitate that movement whether we like it or not. We are living in an age of extinction whether we like it or not. Nature will take all these species and they will come into new ecological balances . Nature doesn't care if the extinctions and invasions are cause by humans, meteors, volcanoes,glaciers, or plate tectonics. Life goes on in new and interesting ways. Watch out for those pythons in the Everglades. All so very true. People also take very short sighted views of the effects of change. If a cane toad eats other animals today, then they think it's a tragedy. But sooner or later something will eat the cane toads (as is already starting to happen in Australia) or a disease will decimate them. If most of these people had their way, they would indeed have stopped evolution 50,000,000 years ago or 20,000,000 or 1,000,000 or 5,000 or whatever, because species were dying and being displaced and they think that is a tragedy and they fanatsize that humans can and should stop that. Evolution is the survivial of the fittest and evolution does not care at all how a creature happens to wind up filling a void. Change is always going to happen and I think it's fascinating. Life is not a tragedy. Life is a comedy (in the sense of the ancient Greek definitions).
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Post by castanea on Jan 1, 2012 11:52:16 GMT -5
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 1, 2012 12:58:16 GMT -5
One species that is of interest to me is Bryonia alba. It is a close relative of domestic watermelon and it grows from a perennial root. It was naturalized into the American west a very long time ago. Genetic studies indicate that there are two wild populations resulting from two separate introductions. One population grows in Northern Utah. The other population grows in Northern Idaho, and surrounding areas. They are genetically distinct, and grow in isolation from each other. The geographical and ecological barriers between them are significant. (The snake river plain, the Nevada badlands, the Montana plains, and the Missoula flood scab-lands do not provide [much] suitable habitat, and are wider than a migrating bird would carry seeds in it's digestive tract.) They have got a good start on evolving into separate species. So many opportunities for life. So many geographic barriers that separate it into bazillions of tiny ecosystems. A new species of bird was recently discovered near here... It is a finch that evolved in a co-evolutionary relationship with the lodge-pole pine. It lives only in a small mountain range in Southern Idaho. The new species arose because of several mechanisms.... The area is on the ecological limits of the range of the lodge-pole pine, and there is an isolated patch of pines growing there. The area is outside the range of the red squirrel which, in other locations, is the primary predator of pre-dispersal lodge-pole pine seeds. Therefore, after the bird became the primary predator, a co-evolutionary relationship developed between the tree and the bird. The whole process of speciation took less than 5000 years. This is a fragile species... A small population of birds that is best suited to feed only on a small population of trees. There's no telling what would happen to this species if red squirrels crossed the steppe that separates this forest fragment from the main forest, or if the forest extended it's range to reconnect with the main forest. p.s. I'll retract this statement "Every species on a volcanic island is an invasive species, and nearly every one of them are doomed to extinction when the island sinks back into the sea." There are too many possible outcomes for me to be using the word "every". hehehe
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Post by templeton on Jan 1, 2012 17:26:38 GMT -5
(to paraphrase Spike Milligan) after my last post on this topic, I promised myself I wouldn't write another - this is it. ;D
You are right - this is all about humans, nature doesn't give a tinker's cuss if stuff goes extinct - the last thylacine didn't care that it was the last, but I'm a human, and I care.
If all this inevitable -humans will do what they do, we should just enjoy it - then at a stretch, Monsanto's depredations, being the result of human activity, is inevitable, we should just sit back and enjoy the 'diversity' they bring to this big experiment. What does it matter that they introduce GM material? it will all work itself out in the long run. And if farmers go broke, that's just all party of America's (and by default the world's) rich tapestry. One major issue here is scale. Extinctions are taking place, as far as we can tell, at totally unprecedented rates. And the time it will take for ecosystems to re-adapt and for rich species diversity to evolve, despite Joseph's optimism, are probably at much longer time scales than we are really comfortable with.
Castanea, I admire your confidence in Theodoropolous - but none of his papers have been subject to peer review. Check out his own list of pubs - talks presented at little conferences, newsletters and the like. This looks like the classic approach of pseudoscientists - coopt the accoutrements of scientists so it looks like you are legit, but don't really play be the rules. I would have a bit more confidence in his assertions if there was even one paper published in a robust journal. He might be right, but on the evidence that I use to make decisions about what i might pursue further, he doesn't rate, so i will never really know. Joseph, why don't you get a breeding pair of red squirrels, take them over to that stand of lodgepole pines, and see what happens? - Not a rhetorical question - if you believe in mixing it up, what's stopping you? Regarding re-introduction, I believe the wolf has been reintroduced into parts of the US where it was previously extirpated. What do folks think about this? On this note, it has been suggested that to replace the terrestrial megafaunal predators in northern australia, that we might introduce the Komodo dragon - could be fun. I can see the headlines now - German backpacker eaten by giant lizard (German tourists seem to be the preferred prey of our last megafaunal predator - the saltwater croc. - they seem to think the signs about not swimming in waterholes don't mean them) And while the reinstatement of thylacaleo is strangely attractive, I'm not sure I would support it even if it were possible - while walking in the bush here in southeastern aust I put up with the fact that there are lots of poisonous things that might kill me, but the thought of being eaten, is somehow a bit daunting. I don't swim in tropical waters for just that reason.
Anyway, off to the garden to water - it's going to be 40 C today. T
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Post by blueadzuki on Jan 1, 2012 18:55:10 GMT -5
(Regarding re-introduction, I believe the wolf has been reintroduced into parts of the US where it was previously extirpated. What do folks think about this? On this note, it has been suggested that to replace the terrestrial megafaunal predators in northern australia, that we might introduce the Komodo dragon - could be fun. I can see the headlines now - German backpacker eaten by giant lizard (German tourists seem to be the preferred prey of our last megafaunal predator - the saltwater croc. - they seem to think the signs about not swimming in waterholes don't mean them) And while the reinstatement of thylacaleo is strangely attractive, I'm not sure I would support it even if it were possible - while walking in the bush here in southeastern aust I put up with the fact that there are lots of poisonous things that might kill me, but the thought of being eaten, is somehow a bit daunting. I don't swim in tropical waters for just that reason. Anyway, off to the garden to water - it's going to be 40 C today. T Re the wolves. It is sort of a mixed bag. In some areas (like yellowstone it's working well, in others it isn't working out so great. As a NorthEasterner I would also point out that the re-introduction of wolves is being blamed by some for the proliferation of Coywolves (wolf coyote hybrids, when then to have the power of wolves (and a good portion of size) combined with the coyotes lack of fear of humans, leading to a rise in attacks). I suppose the Komodo Dragon would be the logical choice, after all it's a close to Melgania as we can get amoung the living monitor lizards (though it only gets to be about half the size) on the other hand given that Komdo dragons are also documented maneaters and venemous (as well as delivering bites that are septic, they actually do have venom) I tend to think that any plant to introduce them anywhere outside of Komodo and Rintjia is not going to get a lot of public support. I think they'd ultimated go with something like Salvadori's monitor from New Guniea; just as big (actuall in absoulute length Salvadori's is longer, but a lot more of that is tail) just as good a megapredator but with a much narrower jawline that makes humans a non viable prey source. Plus if native reports are accurect it may be able to gorw to the size of a Melgania (look up "Atrellia" some time) And agreed living with thylacaleo would likey be no fun So let the Marsupial Lion lay in its 127 year-or so old grave* The same way I'd love to have Haast's eagle back (if they could be trained, you might be able to do a Hobbit movie without CGI Eagles!) but know that bringing them back in a world devoid of massive moa flocks would be asking for trouble. Personally If I was bringing animals back, I'd start small and easy to handle. Bring the Bonsai wolf back to Japan, return to Hawaii it's O'o's, re-crete flocks of Pink headed, Labrador, and Korean Crested Ducks. I'd say try and bring back the dodo's (both standard and white) but I know we have virtually NO DNA for them (the total atcual remains of the dodo, consists of one head and one foot, plus a quantity of subfossil to fossil bones) *I tend to take the opinion that the animal described by the aboroginies as the Yarra or Yarri is one and the same with Thylacaleo, and if so there are scattered by credible reports of encounter with this animal to as late as 1885.)
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Post by castanea on Jan 1, 2012 21:35:19 GMT -5
(to paraphrase Spike Milligan) after my last post on this topic, I promised myself I wouldn't write another - this is it. ;D You are right - this is all about humans, nature doesn't give a tinker's cuss if stuff goes extinct - the last thylacine didn't care that it was the last, but I'm a human, and I care. If all this inevitable -humans will do what they do, we should just enjoy it - then at a stretch, Monsanto's depredations, being the result of human activity, is inevitable, we should just sit back and enjoy the 'diversity' they bring to this big experiment. What does it matter that they introduce GM material? it will all work itself out in the long run. And if farmers go broke, that's just all party of America's (and by default the world's) rich tapestry. One major issue here is scale. Extinctions are taking place, as far as we can tell, at totally unprecedented rates. And the time it will take for ecosystems to re-adapt and for rich species diversity to evolve, despite Joseph's optimism, are probably at much longer time scales than we are really comfortable with. Castanea, I admire your confidence in Theodoropolous - but none of his papers have been subject to peer review. Check out his own list of pubs - talks presented at little conferences, newsletters and the like. This looks like the classic approach of pseudoscientists - coopt the accoutrements of scientists so it looks like you are legit, but don't really play be the rules. I would have a bit more confidence in his assertions if there was even one paper published in a robust journal. He might be right, but on the evidence that I use to make decisions about what i might pursue further, he doesn't rate, so i will never really know. Joseph, why don't you get a breeding pair of red squirrels, take them over to that stand of lodgepole pines, and see what happens? - Not a rhetorical question - if you believe in mixing it up, what's stopping you? Regarding re-introduction, I believe the wolf has been reintroduced into parts of the US where it was previously extirpated. What do folks think about this? On this note, it has been suggested that to replace the terrestrial megafaunal predators in northern australia, that we might introduce the Komodo dragon - could be fun. I can see the headlines now - German backpacker eaten by giant lizard (German tourists seem to be the preferred prey of our last megafaunal predator - the saltwater croc. - they seem to think the signs about not swimming in waterholes don't mean them) And while the reinstatement of thylacaleo is strangely attractive, I'm not sure I would support it even if it were possible - while walking in the bush here in southeastern aust I put up with the fact that there are lots of poisonous things that might kill me, but the thought of being eaten, is somehow a bit daunting. I don't swim in tropical waters for just that reason. Anyway, off to the garden to water - it's going to be 40 C today. T The fact that he has not been peer reviewed is to his favor. Peer review has devolved into a process in most sciences of shutting down dissent. And since the pseudoscience of "invasives" isn't about science at all, and since the politically correct view favors the fantasy that some plants and animals are invasive, it would be rather pointless. Mainstream science in almost every discipline is always 30-60 years behind the times, and struggling like mad to keep it that way. Add to that the fact that many scientific disciplines have been completely corrupted by government money, and you have little reason to put faith in many mainstream scientists. "Invasives" is about everything except science. It is about emotions, money, and lies, and politics, with a little fascism thrown in. It has nothing to do with science and nothing to do with what is "best" for nature. The bottom line about any of this, is that it is totally about human emotions. It is not about science and it is not about morality. Nature has no morals. I want Monsanto shut down and every officer in the company arrested and jailed. But I dont pretend that I take this position because of science. I take this position because it comports with my emotions. I think what you have yet to pick up from my posts templeton, is that I am perfectly fine if you don't like cane toads and want to kill every one of them. If you want to spnd 24 hours a day killing the little buggers, go ahead. I will not stop you and in fact will cheer you on. I find them to be obnoxious little creatures. But where I have an issue is when someone tries to claim that killing cane toads is scientifically preferable or morally preferable. It is neither. My other problem is when they try to tell me I can't have cane toads on my property. That just makes me want to have a few. If someone wants to exclude a plant or animal from their country because they don't like it, so be it, but when they try to claim that their likes and dislikes are governed by science, or by morality, I know they are trying to feed me something other than truth.
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Post by templeton on Jan 1, 2012 21:35:59 GMT -5
Having re-read my last post it might be seen as a bit intemperate. My apologies if I've offended anyone. I'll claim I'm tetchy because of the heat. I can get a bit passionate at times, but intend no offense. I try to take a friendly, if robust approach to these discussions - I enjoy exploring this diversity of views, and value your opinions. Thanks for that info on the New Guinea monitors, BA. Didn't know of them. Re reports of late surviving thylacaleos, I'm pretty skeptical. There are continual reports of big predators in the Aust. Bush - a friend of mine claims evidence of big cat presence on his property in the wet forests of the Otway Ranges. But there are never any good photos, scats, fur samples or footprints. There was one credible report of a Thylacine in Tassie a few years ago, by a park ranger. It's been very quiet since, which is understandable - if I saw one, I wouldn't let anyone know of it, so maybe the authorities are keeping it under wraps - I hope so. And strange things turn up - the wollemi pine, for example <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollemia> we live in hope. T
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 1, 2012 22:08:06 GMT -5
Good discussion all around. I didn't notice any name calling, and the only mud flung was against the walls of the fortress surrounding The Company that this thread was created to defend. I suspect That Company is mostly responsible for the anti-invasives movement in the first place. So perhaps we'd have been better off throwing seed-balls, but after the mud is washed away I hope that a bit of nutrient residue will be left on the walls: to be colonized by a patch of lichens.
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Post by templeton on Jan 2, 2012 3:29:13 GMT -5
Castanea, you may be interested in the material on this page <http://www.holmgren.com.au/>. david holmgren was one of the original authors of permaculture, and has written a very interesting (peer reviewed! paper which is mostly sympathetic to your views. (I haven't met David, but did spend a bit of time in a share house with his co-author bill mollison.) I promise i came on this entirely by accident this afternoon, surfing cooking recipes in Tasmania, of all things. Note his caveats on introductions, particularly animals, and in particular his citation of Caroll, from which he quotes "Compared to invader free communities, invader perturbed communities are more likely to require monitoring and management of evolutionary processes." But given your disdain for scientific peer reviewed work, I guess you might reject this as I do Theodoropolous T
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Post by castanea on Jan 2, 2012 11:19:51 GMT -5
Castanea, you may be interested in the material on this page <http://www.holmgren.com.au/>. david holmgren was one of the original authors of permaculture, and has written a very interesting (peer reviewed! paper which is mostly sympathetic to your views. (I haven't met David, but did spend a bit of time in a share house with his co-author bill mollison.) I promise i came on this entirely by accident this afternoon, surfing cooking recipes in Tasmania, of all things. Note his caveats on introductions, particularly animals, and in particular his citation of Caroll, from which he quotes "Compared to invader free communities, invader perturbed communities are more likely to require monitoring and management of evolutionary processes." But given your disdain for scientific peer reviewed work, I guess you might reject this as I do Theodoropolous T "Compared to invader free communities, invader perturbed communities are more likely to require monitoring and management of evolutionary processes." The phrase "invader free commmunities" has no coherent scientific meaning. The word "invader" is an emotionally charged word that has no scientific meaning. The conclusion that any communities "are more likely to require monitoring and management of evolutionary processes" is his conclusion about how to achieve results that he DESIRES. In short, his statement is totally an emotionally charged statement that is about his personal wishes to obtain results he wants to obtain. He is entitled to his opinion but nature does not care about his opinion. It seems that you persist in thinking that Theodoropoulos' work is only about discussing the results of disruptions of communities by outside organisms. It is far more than that. He rigrorously uses logic to show how completely absurd the entire "invasives" argument is as well as the fictitious concept of "native plants". In that respect he follows many of the arguments of Toby Hemenway which point out clearly and lucidly that the entire concept of "invasives" has no scientific basis. For example: "Wait, you say: these plants are deliberately spread by people; that’s different! But to an ecologist, it is irrelevant that the dispersion vector of these plants is a primate. After all, we don’t excuse holly or Autumn olive, even though without bird dispersal, they could not spread. Why are corn, soy, and wheat not on any blacklists? Because we think of them differently than plants spread by non-humans. This suggests that an invasive species is an idea, a product of our thinking, not an objective phenomenon. When we restore land, we restore to an idea, not to objective criteria. Let me give another example of how our ideas dictate which species we’ll tolerate and which we won’t. The wooded hillside on rural Oregon where I once lived was thick with 40- to 120-year-old Douglas fir and hemlock. But as I walked these forests, I noticed that scattered every few acres were occasional ancient oak trees, four to six feet in diameter, much older than the conifers and now being overtopped by them. I realized that in these ancient oaks I was seeing the remnants of the oak savanna that had been maintained for millennia by fire set by the original inhabitants, the Calapuya people. The fir forest moved in when the whites arrived and drove off the Calapuya, and suppressed fire. So what I was seeing was a conifer forest created by human-induced fire-suppression, and it had replaced the oak savanna that had been preserved by fire setting. Which was the native landscape? Both were made by humans. If we say, let’s restore to what existed before humans altered it, we’d need to go back to birches and willows, since humans arrived as the glaciers retreated." www.patternliteracy.com/116-native-plants-restoring-to-an-ideaLogic and rationality do not have to be peer reviewed.
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Post by jonnyyuma on Jan 2, 2012 14:29:02 GMT -5
Good discussion all around. I didn't notice any name calling, and the only mud flung was against the walls of the fortress surrounding The Company that this thread was created to defend....... Never my intentions Joseph, see my quotes below. I do really appreciate the candid opinions and general cordial responses from everyone. I cannot say that enough to everyone, this was actually a discussion, one that went in many directions as they often do. Some interesting points were brought up in replys 82, 83 and 86. I am still struggling witht the argument against GMO, as related to my question in reply #4. In many situations it is an argument against Monsanto, and has little to do with GMO in general, which was my intention to highlight in reply #4. Thanks again all! Jonny
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Jan 2, 2012 17:13:45 GMT -5
haha, i can barely remember what the original topic was about. I'm a big supporter in saving species whenever possible simply because life is much more interesting with creatures that aren't human and the diversity that comes with it. I personally think that maybe the only way to save the polar bears would be to relocate many (here to the mountains of Colorado for example). If one were to physically just relocate them perhaps some wouldn't know how to feed themselves and they would die off, but i think a few would make it. Then there is the idea that some polar bear embryos could be transplanted into local bears and raised to eat local foods. Assuming that somehow a thriving population could be established i think it would be enough to save them, and eventually they would probably evolve to be different from their original state(since different environmental conditions are a key player in driving evolution). Maybe it would even be for nothing, because perhaps in this new environment having white fur might be a disadvantage and they could eventually evolve to have black or brown fur instead. But i still think it should be tried. In the case of GMO's, i don't think it's fair to judge them all the same with one generalizing view. I think each one has to be evaluated individually. Roundup ready corn probably doesn't pose any allergic dangers, but BT corn probably does. Then again, like some people have said, nature always finds a way to adapt. I'm willing to bet that many of these new foods that will pose allergic dangers to some will actually pose no dangers to others, and still others will also evolve in time to be able to eat these foods. That's not to say we should just start releasing stuff into the environment without rigorous testing and without some sort of moral ethics, but that in the grand scope of things not all things are as bad as they seem to be. The idea that RNA from our food makes it into out bloodstream is interesting, and highlights the fact that we may actually be unknowingly be selecting on future generations based solely on the food we eat. It's also a slightly scary thought that DNA from GMO plants could potentially make it into bacteria, and those bacteria could potentially either damage the environment or colonize out gut. I mean talk about a chronic poison being secreted by something living in your gut. On the other hand though i think the bacteria in our gut is probably pretty easy to flush out and become repopulated fairly often, so perhaps that potential danger isn't quite as bad as one first imagines.
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Post by steev on Jan 2, 2012 21:09:30 GMT -5
It may be easy to flush out the bacteria in one's gut, but in my experience it doesn't feel easy, nor is the repopulation always a pleasant activity. Indeed, I have found the process much worse than I have at first imagined. Did you know that it is actually possible to simultaneously spew from both ends? I didn't; it certainly was a learning experience! As I understand, it was a pretty fair approximation of cholera, fortunately without the death part. I may have a jaundiced view of invasive species.
Regarding selecting humans based on the foods we eat, we've always done that. Those people with the mutation for lactose tolerance have had a possible advantage in nutrition over those with the original genome (most humans). I wonder what the genetic situation is regarding gluten intolerance and whether it's increasing, or just populations not historically exposed to lots of it being exposed more. If anything, I suspect we're short-circuiting natural selection in dietary matters, due to availability of a broader range of foodstuffs and medical intervention.
Being in California, I'm a little down on eucalyptus, star thistle, Scotch broom, Eastern red squirrels, and some people, but I rather like kale, corn, apples, Virginia opossums, crawdads, and some other people.
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