Why bother? You don’t seem to be reading (or comprehending) what he wrote.
Last year, 20% of the crop losses in the Maryland area were due to this little bastard- the Brown Marmorated Stinkbug. They’re an invasive species from China, first started appearing in the US around 1998. Nothing eats them; but they sure as hell find food here. They’re constantly invading my house- every day I find at least 10. One warm day last year, one of my outside walls had thousands sunning themselves- just in time for the outdoor baby shower we threw in our yard. They stink, and get into everything.
If you can’t see the problem with that, well… I don’t know what to tell you. Sure, it’s survival of the fittest, but since nothing eats them they’ve got a huge leg (or six) up on everything else. Eventually, yes, something will find a way to eat them, or their population will rise so high that a disease will devastate them, and yes, that’s evolution in action… but in the meantime, they’re eating our crops and invading our houses, so forgive me if I don’t take the philosophical viewpoint.
Lightnin’, there’s nothing that says you have to *like *the stinkbug or any other “invasive species” (or native species, for that matter). But don’t the details you provide illustrate why attempts to stop them are ultimately futile? That was a big part of my point that seems to have gotten lost in the fracas.
If you’re after gettin’ the honey, don’t be killing all the bees!
Yes, the long view is what I meant. Of course, there’s the long view, and the really, really long view. It’s a matter of debate just how long a view we should take, but it still just comes down to us. If it’s good for us, long term, then why not?
There are also two arguments to be made for biodiversity being advantageous to human all by its lonesome.
- Biodiversity provides a genetic repository of traits that help ensure the survival of species overall. Humans practice monoculture when we farm – we generally pick only a single species of fruit, vegetable, grain, etc. to raise. Which means that if that single species of fruit, etc., encounters a disease that it can’t deal with, we stand on the edge of disaster. Case in point: bananas. The single species we farm is doing well in the marketplace, but has been wiped out on several continents by a fungal rust. If and when the fungal rust gets to the places where the banana species survives, well, we will have no bananas today. The Master speaks on the issue.
Biodiversity is also good because it increases the range of biochemicals that humans have available for medicine. When Brazilians carve up a few acres of rain forest to grow more corn or bananas, unknown species of plants of insects are wiped out, as biodiversity is much greater in rain forests than in other ecosystems. Possibly some obscure tree, fungus, insect or rodent produces a chemical of great use to humans. We’ll never know, because we wipe them out all the time.Cite.
No, attempts to stop invasive species are not always futile.
You asked why in the world anyone would worry about an invasive species. When someone provided you with an example of an invasive species that destroyed crops, smelled bad, and annoyed people, you dismiss it.
But you fucking asked why anyone would care about invasive species! You were answered. Someone explained why they cared. Then you suddenly switched gears. No, back the fuck up. Do you understand why human beings might be annoyed with some invasive species–while at the same time being pleased with certain other ones?
If you admit that some invasive species are annoying to humans for whatever reason, then we can start arguing about whether attemps to control invasive species are utterly hopeless, or a waste of money, or worthwhile.
But it’s a fact that sometimes all you need to control an invasive species is one disease or one species that eats the damn thing, and suddenly the invasive species goes from covering everything to rare.
So to recap, in case you didn’t understand:
Invasive species are sometimes annoying to humans.
Invasive species are sometimes possible to control.
Therefore, in the case of an annoying invasive species, it’s worthwhile to try to figure out an economical way to control it. Sometimes those ways exist. Sometimes they don’t and we better get used to the radically altered landscape. But maybe we shouldn’t get too used to the radically altered landscape, because one new bug might mean doom for the weed.
Then you’d be happy if it was wall-to-wall Canada Green grass, worldwide, wouldn’t you? That’s as good as PaveWorld, basically (LawnWorld, perhaps?). Diversity matters. Even for such human-centric selfish reasons as maintaining a genebase for drugs or new crop varieties.
To put the argument the other way, would we be better off with Australia as it is now, or would we have been better off if the dingos had never arrived? In my opinion things are different but not necessarily worse. The Ecology changed and adapted and a new balance arose. That said, humans also have adapted to current circumstances, and re-adapting to a changing circumstances are usually hard and painful therefor we do our best to preserve the world as we have it now.
What a moronic thing to say.
It is too bad you don’t live in the big island of Hawaii:
Hawaii fights noisy frog infestation
Quote:
"…Beloved in its native Puerto Rico, the coqui frog has become a menace in Hawaii, where it suddenly appeared in the 1990s. With no natural predators, such as snakes, to keep their numbers under control, the frogs and their loud “ko-KEE” mating calls have multiplied exponentially — causing headaches for homeowners.
Some believe the noisy amphibians could also cause serious damage to Hawaii’s economy if they drag down housing prices, which real estate agents say is a distinct possibility…
Brooks Kaiser, a University of Hawaii visiting scholar heading an economic impact study of the coqui, said living next to a major infestation could rival the experience of living next to an airport. Residents, for the most part, agree…
Sixty-two% of Big Island real estate agents surveyed last year by University of Hawaii professor Arnold Hara said they were involved in deals affected in some way by the presence of coqui. Nine of the 53 real estate agents said they had handled cases in which homebuyers backed out of contracts because the frogs were too loud…"
So, why don’t you take your snotty little song-and-dance act to Hawaii
and inform the yokels there that since you have no “investment” in
what lives in your green space, then by implication neither should
anyone else who is as rational as you are.
Those frogs are not an isolated incident, either. Google “Brown tree snake”
for information on an invasive species which is eradicating most of the bird
population of Guam, and closer to home there are of course the lampreys
and zebra mussels which have been such a problem in North America’s Great Lakes.
Another member mentioned the newly introduced Atlantic lionfish. I don’t
think he mentioned that lionfish have poisonous spines capable of inflicting
excruciatingly painful wounds. Wouldn’t hurt my feelings if some people
around here blundered into a temeramental lionfish on the next trip to the
beach. A lionfish spine right up the u-no-what would be especially appropriate.
Dial it back, colonial. Calling a post moronic and snotty is rude and doesn’t serve any purpose.
No, I didn’t switch gears: it was a key part of my argument from the beginning. From my OP:
Also note that nowhere in my OP do I say “I don’t get why anyone cares about invasive species”. That is an interpretation people have made of my post, but it’s not actually in the text: go back and look for yourself.
First, I don’t believe “wall to wall grass” would be “as good as PaveWorld”. Ever see the movie Microcosmos? There’s a lot of life going on in a patch of grass that isn’t found on pavement. And there’s the effect plants have in cooling temperatures, sequestering carbon, filtering water, etc.
But regardless of all that, it takes a lot of work (and chemicals) to maintain a monoculture. That’s not going to be what you get if you let land go fallow and let it grow as it will. You’re still going to have all kinds of different weeds, shrubs, trees, etc., depending on the local conditions.
I’m all good, btw, with trying to preserve samples of threatened species in zoos, labs, greenhouses. The global seed bank is a good idea. What I find quixotic is trying to stamp out a species from an entire region of the world when it has found purchase there and is successful. And there are many scientists who try to stamp out such species even when they don’t particularly bother humans, just because they are not “native” to an ecosystem and the scientists are trying to return it to some imagined primeval perfection.
It really *is *too bad–I agree! Buy me one of those (presumably now cheaper) houses in a noisy neighbourhood, and I’ll remedy that toute de suite. 
I’m not an expert on climate issues, SlackerInc, but it seems to me that your view is based on your opinions of what evolution and environmental science ought to be, not what they actually are and how they work. You’re not making a logical argument here.
Aren’t humans an invasive species?
Marley, can you be more specific in your criticisms? What did I say that is based on “my opinions of what evolution and environmental science ought to be”, and what, by contrast, is an example of “what they actually are and how they work”? What, specifically, is an example of how my argument is “not logical”, and can you describe and illustrate the logical fallacy or hole in the reasoning?
ETA: I agree, TriPolar: humans are an invasive species, big time (just ask all the large mammals that used to live in the Western Hemisphere). So we can throw hypocrisy in here as well.
I think that implicit in the invasive species definition is that the invasion is caused by man, either accidentally or on purpose. We left Africa like most of the fauna from Africa did. Are Asian rhinos invasive species? (Assuming rhinos originally evolved in Africa, which I’m not really sure of.)
Nope. Asia > Africa :).
I figured that was what was usually meant. But it seems to be a distinction meant to indemnify humans from the damage we’ve caused while still decrying other species as invasive. Humans moving out of Africa was caused by humans. We weren’t carried by Asian rhinos on their way home.
Eh. It’s a matter of definition. Personally, I think if you include humans, you water the term down unnecessarily. But whatever.
To put it very simply, introducing a new species to an ecosystem can not only change the ecosystem, it can destroy it.
One of the classic examples was the introduction of goats and rabbits to Round Island. These ate virtually all the vegetation, starving out the native reptiles, which were the only permanent natural inhabitants, and ultimately starting to starve the rabbits and goats themselves, as the soil started to erode away without the trees. The sea bird nesting tunnels, stripped of their grass coverings started to collapse.
You see, what you think of as a ‘successful’, ‘superior’ species can just be a species evolved to take maximum short term advantage of resources. The species which evolved along with the plants, over millions of years, as part of the ecosystem have also evolved mechanisms to stop themselves from destroying their only habitat; if they didn’t, they died out. Introduced species, from vastly different conditions have no such mechanisms.
Rabbits are evolved for a lifestyle where they can just move on if the grass gets too short, that doesn’t work on an island. But in a place with no predators, the population can explode… until the grass runs out.
I mean, yes, probably in the history of the earth, species have occasionally destroyed all of their own resources (humans are pretty good at it). But, and here’s the thing; not very often. Naturally predator and prey, plant and animal, are both contantly evolving, so neither really normally gets ‘the upper hand’. Moving things around, so species are in a different enviroment, where the prey and the plants are completely unadapted to that kind of predator can be deadly to entire ecosytems.
The same thing can happen in other, larger environments too; in New Zealand, the possums introduced from Australia, in a really badly thought out plan to start a fur industry, are killing forests- a large part of their diet is tree bark. Australian trees are adapted to this, they grow flaky, layered bark, the outer layers of which can be eaten without damaging the tree. New Zealand’s trees, slow growing bases of the food chain, have no such adaptation, and they act like most other trees when the back is stripped off- they die.
Are you really, seriously, going to argue that conservationists should have just watched Round Island erode away to a lifeless bare rock, rather than just getting rid of the rabbits and goats?
Do you really think the people of New Zealand should just go ‘Hey, that’s evolution in action,’ and watch their forests, and all the unique, weird birds and reptiles that live there die, without even trying to correct the bloody stupid mistake they made?*
I have to say, I’m glad they disagreed.
*Well, apart from a few saved for zoos, of course- not that all species are temperamentally suitable for captive breeding- ( for example, the Kakapo appears to need the fruit of the rimu tree to breed, and no, no-one really knows why), so I guess we lose them completely.
I really don’t have anything else to add. It’s just an analysis of the flaws in your argument that were illustrated by Blake, Lightnin’ and Lemur866. I don’t think you understand why people react to invasive species the way they do, I don’t think you understand why they can be a problem, and I don’t think you have an accurate view of what these kind of situations mean from an evolutionary standpoint.
And to address something else in your OP: species are always “fighting it out” in real time. You don’t need to have the entire South overrun by an invasive plant to see that kind of thing happen.