"Invasive species", or "survival of the fittest"?

Great Debates
61

You are more than welcome to call me “Slacker”, and it wouldn’t demean me at all.

Indeed. And unless you think we have reached some magic moment in history when the laws are exactly right as they are, there is no reason I shouldn’t agitate for a law to be overturned when I feel that it clearly violates civil liberties and both the letter and the intent of the Fourth Amendment (particularly since I don’t think you can credibly argue that if these ag officials find a few pounds of cannibis or bricks of cocaine, or for that matter a dead body in the trunk, they are going to turn a blind eye as long as they don’t find any real contraband, like grapefruits or kumquats).

Not even partial nonsense. Humans are predators and they predated those species out of existence. Or to look at it another way: conditions changed, and those species did not adapt well (whereas by contrast, other animals like raccoons adapted very well to the rise of human technological civilisation and the accompanying human population boom).

It’s funny you should mention that asteroid (perhaps combined with increased volcanism) 65-odd million years ago. Had that mass extinction not happened, it seems very unlikely that we would be here debating this. So by the same token, if we humans pick winners, we are also picking losers–including some that could have arisen millions of years from now but will never exist because we prevented other species from going extinct and getting out of the way for new evolutionary contenders.

And humans have done exactly that: you mentioned the passenger pigeon, which was wiped out by humans with guns. Yet many other species of birds that are hunted by humans with guns have survived to this day. Voila: evolution in action, survival of the fittest, given the conditions at any given time. As I say, I would be shocked if Dawkins would disagree.

Moving on to Hero From Sector 7G:

I got Cs and Ds in science in high school, actually. I was however the only kid in my school to get an A on the notoriously difficult physics final exam, and I got a perfect 36 on the natural sciences portion of the ACT. I did take a course in college on ecology and environmental science and got an A.

Ha, this is so patronising it literally made me laugh out loud. Like this: LOL!

And I’ve been focussing on evolution all thread. I mean, let’s face it: ecology is not really a top tier scientific discipline in terms of its credibility, like evolutionary biology is. Like sociology (and I say this with affection, as both my wife and mother are sociologists), it is too infected by ideology to really be a pure science.

Another LOL! Certainly you do mean just that. But it’s not working, because I reject your credentialism.

Indeed I am. But here’s the thing: see up there next to “Main >” where it says “Great Debates”? When my primary intent is to learn something, I’ll post in “General Questions” as I have done several times in the past. When I’m out to debate, I’ll post here. That all right with you?

62

Uh-huh. Well, my mileage obviously varies, because I still can’t avoid seeing your diminution of my username and the application of scare quotes as an ad hominem. But it’s no big deal, I’ve certainly been called worse. Just not in GD.

I don’t know why you wish to continue the hijack of your own thread into a discussion of your feelings of perceived injustice at the hand of our legal system, because oppression by The Man wasn’t part of your OP. Perhaps it is because you really haven’t offered anything worthwhile regarding the biological facts.

And there you are, right on cue, with some more pseudo-biological foolishness.

I find it rather ironic that you can say this, when you offered exactly the opposite in your OP:

Humans didn’t predate those species into extinction, we exterminated them. We are the first, and the only, species on earth that has the ability to do this to species up and down the tree of life. This fact sets us apart from the normal meanings and processes of evolution. This isn’t “evolution in action” nor is it “survival of the fittest” even by the vastly incorrect meanings of those terms that you apply. It is instead exactly the “circular arguments about the natural state” Hero From Sector 7G refers to in his/her post.

I am astounded that you claim “ecology is not really a top tier scientific discipline” and in your OP say “How am I wrong? I guess I must be, somehow, because I never *ever *see anyone take this position–not even evolutionary scientists, who you’d think might be interested in seeing species fight it out and show us evolutionary struggle in real time.” Evolution does not operate by having species fight it out and invasive species artificially introduced by man do not demonstrate anything about the evolutionary struggle. These statements demonstrate yet again just how vast are your misunderstandings of evolutionary processes, and of the field of ecology.

Indeed, it is quite all right. But with that as your avowed intent, I have no desire to continue our interaction. You make it perfectly clear that all you wish to do is repeatedly proclaim your own misconceptions and fallacies, whinge on about perceived injustices, and hand wave away the scientific explanations offered to you by various posters. You may be fervently opposed to learning anything here, but that doesn’t make this a debate.

63

Your call. Next time you might check which sub-board you’re in before posting. HTH :slight_smile:

64

This is the highest level of court challenge I was able to discover of the agricultural checkpoints. IANAL but I have read more than my share of appellate court decisions, and this one strikes me as containing particularly weak, tortured logic. It essentially says the Fourth Amendment can be dispensed with because, well, what the state of California is doing “administratively” is more important than the Bill of Rights, even though the guy in this case got busted for something that had nothing to do with the checkpoint’s actual function.

This issue has apparently not been taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court. I hope that in some future era this California Appeals Court decision will read to historians as a farcical rationalisation, like Plessy v. Ferguson. But it is entirely possible that it may instead become more like the now well-ingrained misuse of the Commerce Clause (which by the 1940s was extended to telling a farmer* he couldn’t grow wheat on his own land for his own consumption), a cudgel to let government do as it likes, Bill of Rights be damned.

*Ironically, this rights-trampling decision was written by Robert Jackson, who also wrote the decision that contains what is for me the most stirring passage I’ve ever read on the importance of protecting civil liberties, not just when it’s easy but when it’s hard:

65

I have to say I find Slacker’s arguments very convincing, and I’m coming from a very green enviromentalist point of view.

However, that Slacker has managed to convice me so far could also be influenced by the fact that his argumentation has been much more civil and less emotional than many of the people arguing against his standpoint.

66

Wow, thanks Stoneburg–I sincerely appreciate that! (Hopefully you will not now be dismissed as my sock puppet.)

67

Hi,

I have a degree in Biotechnology and have worked in research centers and ecological organizations.

Thank you all to help me understand better this subject.

I believe this has been such a long debate because this is realy a dificult subject.

**1) I also find it very dificult when i hear that human action is not nature. **

I once saw a documentary about a tree that drops their fruits in the sea and they float half the world into another continent. And this is nature. But when a human ship transports some animal to another continent its not?

When a bird goes above an island and drops seeds from something he eat, this is nature. But when a man does the same its polution?

When an animal builds a dam is nature, but when mankind does it is polution?

By definition what ever we do its nature and natural. It may destructive, even selfdestructive but its nature. Has it is to see how what we did may be destructive for us and try to undo it.

We can not harm nature. We are nature. We can only harm ourselfs. Nature doesnt realy cares who survives or not. Its just a complex organic “game” with specific rules.

2) As a scientist (if i can call myself one) i also want as many species i can study. And we need many other species around in order to survive so is only natural we want them. Plus biodiversity means options. And more options means we have more chances to survive. Diferent plants to crop under diferent conditions and so on… But this is to defend nature? No, this is us being smart pretecting our interests. And that is our nature. That is nature.

And when it comes to survival of life in a place, usually a **high biodiversity improves the chances of survival of life when the ecossystem is under some stress. **Diferent species have diferent tolerance to diferent kinds of stress so… if you have many species… more chances for some specie to survive. So biodiversity is to defend life, yes. Not nature, but life, yes.

3) Should we try to manipulate results or leave it alone and see what happends?

Survival of the fitest is evolution. To mess with that is to mess with evolution and natural balance of things. On the hand, biodiversity increases the chances of survival of life, and for mankind more biotecnology options, more to learn, more options for medicine, more option to crop, diferent animals to produce… and so on. So when you see a specie killing many others it freaks us out. Should we has humans alow the destrution of biotecnological potential tools?

As humans we welcome evolution, as at the same time soffer from loosing options. So what we realy want is evolution with the oportunity to keep “older models”. We want it all! Who know if it comes in handy? :wink:

There are many examples of disavantages that under a new stress became strong advantages. What is better today may not be better tomorrow.

On the other hand, if a specie show to be better, stronger, more resistance, doesnt that makes that ecosystem more resistante and stronger? Sholdnt we allow a new ecosystem to take place and evolve? Dificult to say. Its risky! Nature made us play safe. Has humans most of us usually go for the safest option. To choose what we know and works, rather than risk it all. There are always some “crazy” ones that risk it all (thats nature too, and a very important part of it!).

A very good documentary show animal behavier about a huge group of animals tryng to cross a strong wide wilder river. When they enconter the river they all stop. Until some crazy one jumps in. All the others stay and watch him and see how he pulls it off. When he hits the other side, a few others jump in. If they cross too, a lot more jump. After some time half of the animals are on the other side. At the end there is always some who are still afraid of jumping in. This is also natural, normal and evolution. If by some reason there is some unlikely threat on the other side, the scary ones are still behind and will survive. So being afraid is evolution and well has being unafraid. Diversity as always is the key.

So to play safe is our nature and is only natural we try to control things and try to keep known plants and options.

As it is only natural for us not to be able to do it may times and some risk is bound to take place. And thats how evolution keeps on going.

Its all about risk management. Probabilities. Whats the probability of a new stronger specie to be better than many known species who offer many diferent levels of many diferent kinds of stresses?

Has a scientist and has a person i would like to have them both. Has nature we are bound to try to fight the invading specie so we dont loose the “older models”, and we probably are bound to fail to do it properly and the invading specie is bound to succed at some level and we have it both. It is only nature for us to defend what we find it better for us and fight the rest, like many fungs use antibiotics, and plants change composition of soils to eliminate competiton, at the same time that many organisms stablish strong relationships with other organisms that help them.

Its interesting to see even in hunting. Most species only attack the weak individuals of a group, never the healthy ones. Young, old, with a disease, dum ones. They never go agains the strong ones. The ones making more. It is even reported how some species grab young ones givem them to their kids for they to play (practice) and than give them back so they will grow morwe juicy lol.

68

Well, up to a point. The bombardment of elements with neutrons to produce Seaborgium is not “natural.” Reducing test-chamber temperatures to nearly absolute zero is not “natural.” That element, and that temperature, are not to be found anywhere in the universe, except in multi-million-dollar laboratory configurations.

Meanwhile, some things that do happen in nature are also not “natural,” such as gigantic impacts from orbiting objects. The extinction of the dinosaurs was from an “outside” object, something not found within the ecological cycles of earth’s life.

(If the Vogons destroy earth to make a hyperspace bypass, that isn’t “natural” in the environmental/ecological sense either…)

That said, yeah, there isn’t much difference between people introducing plants or animals to far-off lands, and plants and animals migrating on their own. We’re just a little more efficient at it.

69

We humans are the fittest species of all. We “deserve” to dominate all other species. And part of our domination, to our own ends, is…to fight invasive species that are harmful to us or that we just don’t like.

So it all works out.

70

Change causes upset. Any big impact on an ecosystem will cause a lot of things in that ecosystem to change, and the things we depend on it for can disappear.

It’s like climate change. While some areas might in theory benefit from CC, most will not simply because it’ll be a dramatic change to how things are, while we’re all used to (and have set up our economies based on) how things are.

In general, with any big random change, there are more losers than winners, at first. Eventually, there is a new ecology and it’s in some kind of balance (with fluctuations, of course). Between then and now, it’s not good for investors: too much uncertainty. It’s not good for farmers: crops that used to do well don’t, and we haven’t found new ones that do as well yet. The list goes on.

71

That’s a useless definition. If everything is natural, then what’s the use in having the term? It’s equivalent to “existent”.

The whole point of having the term “natural” is to distinguish man-made things from things that aren’t man-made. OK, take the term and give it another meaning. We’ll just come up with a new one that means “man-made” or not. It’ll still be worth discussing.

72

Bioworld, really interesting thoughts, thank you.

73

The problem is that “natural” just like “race”. Like “race” it’s a term left over from a less enlightened time. And like race it is a heavily loaded term because of its history and cultural associations. And like race, everybody is intuitively certain they know exactly what it means, but nobody can actually define it in any way that it is useful, as you’ve just discovered.

We already have a term that means “man made”: Anthropogenic. Literally man-made. There’s a reason why scientists use that term, and not natural. Anthropogenic actually tells you something. Natural tells you nothing.

Natural was a term coined when everybody was religious. It was a term intended to separate the miraculous and the works of Gods greatest creations from the rest of creation. It never meant man-made, it meant “not intended by god”. Which is why fire has never, ever been called unnatural. Nor pottery, nor slavery nor even agriculture. Because while those things are clearly man-made they are all things assigned to man by god in the Bible. In contrast homosexuality and death, which are clearly not man-made, were considered to be unnatural.

As you can see, natural doesn’t mean “man-made”. It means “against the proper order of the universe/planet”. And that is exactly how the term is used by most people today. Farmers living in the New Guinea highlands are living a “natural” life. Humans are naturally vegetarian. Homosexuality is unnatural and so forth. Nobody uses natural to mean man-made, though of course there is a lot of overlap. However many things, including powdered sweeteners and agriculture are quite happily called natural every day.

And because of its history natural is a loaded term. natural means “correct”. Vegetarianism is natural. Homosexuality is unnatural. Eating fruit grown in an irrigated monoculture is natural, Hunting for sport is unnatural. And so forth. You can’t use "natural without implying correctness any more than you can use race without implying phenotypic coherence.

If you want to refer to something as being non-man-made then don’t call it unnatural. Call it non-anthropogenic. That way your meaning is clear.

74

In spite of tending to be polar opposites politically, there seems to me to be a strong similarity between those people who believe that natural is always better, and those who believe in the power of the free market. In both cases there is a firm belief that there is “the way things should be” and that some Gaia force or invisible hand will make everything good as long as no one interferes. So any interference no matter the intention is inherently bad and will lead to inferior results.

In fact both are just complex dynamic systems that have no morality. Both include some feedback loops that help to optimize certain quantities, but in some cases a bit of judicious tweaking is in order. If a naturally occurring plague threatens to wipe out a certain subspecies of owl, then I have no problem taking steps in the name of biodiversity to save the owls even if their extinction would be natural. Similarly if free markets lead to a concentration of wealth that is bad for the greater economy then it might be time for external forces to step in.

75

1)In the outer space there are temperatures far beyond what ever we can now atchive in the most advance lab. In the sun core for exemple.

  1. Gigantic impacts are very rare but i cant think of anything more natural than meteorites.

  2. Nature is not an earth thing. Nature is all the universe. Maybe you are thinking about life. Even life is a universe thing. Many think life may have been introduced by a meteore from another planet.

  3. We are nature. What ever we do is imprinted in our dna. The drive to search for new things… Curiosity… We feel lonely because we are a group specie. Many species go alone just fine. We are never satisfied. This is what makes succed. Its not racional. Those are needs. And any need is a basic thing. Imprited in our dna. We are just able of more complex works. Animals build complex dams, complex nests and structures, some have complex hunting and comunication behaviers. But we exceed.

76

Actually this is big deal and currently thought by many in the scientific comunity to be one of the main problems in why we kept having a destructive behaiver when it comes to ecology.

**We arent acting agaisnt nature, we are acting agaisnt an ecological system that sustain our life. **

When we use the expression hurting nature is not only scientificaly wrong, it makes us feel like we are hurting things that we have nothing to do with.

Like many other natural plagues, we can consume all resources to extincion and/or behaive in a way that the ecologial system that we depend changes until its no longer allows us to live.
This is quite a natural behavier, and usually how plagues end up in control. We are acting quite natural. We expand, use all the resources available, do all the damage we are able to.

Since we no longer have any natural major threats to stop us, and since oil energy alot more resources, our specie got unbalaced and population started booming since around 1930 faster than ever. Until than lack of food and disiese played a major population control.

But there are other natural ways of population control.

When ever a specie population density grows too big, individuals start atacking each other and fight each other to the death for the resources. I’ve seen this in fish tanks and pig farms. We all seen in world wars. Germany success built pressure to expand and pressed france and russia to react. It was a mater of time before world war I started.

World war 2 started after the big depression in usa colapsed germany economy (exports) wich led to unemplioiment (lack of resources) and civil unrest (individual figthing for resources). Push them to attack jews and many others foreign peopl, to keep the resourses to them self. Hitler got elected when his strong military ways was the only way to keep necessary civil peace and control. Not only he stop the madness in the streets, he enjoyed it and went all europe.

Such behaiver was recently seen in greece with the current economical crisis. Right wing radicals attactek gipsies and foreings at a market, blaming them for the lack of jobs.

All of this is basic animal behavier. Whats strange is that humans have the ability to think about how their behavier affects their future. So is strange that we keep in a pathway to harm ourselfs.

But like Nietzsche said once:
“Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.”

This can also be explain by behavior science. Its called evolucionary psycology and explains how our needs and behaviours are evolution atchivements. We prosper being how we are.

77

I think nuclear explosions have equalled the temperatures of the sun’s core, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I was talking about low temperatures. Temps lower than the 3 degree (K) background radiation can only be obtained by heat pumps, and those aren’t demonstrated in nature.

I was limiting “nature” to earth’s biosphere. Meteorite impacts are external to that.

Possible. Different context that what I was speaking of. In any case, I don’t think it’s useful to extend “nature” to things only advanced human technology can accomplish.

Not true. Proton accelerators, computers, jet aircraft, and fusion bombs have nothing to do with our DNA. The billionth digit of pi is not to be found encoded in our DNA. (It is possible – perhaps even so likely as to be inevitable! – that our DNA sequences can be found encoded deeep within the digits of pi – but we’re talking digits in the range of 10^900, not merely 10^9.)

I actually agree with everything in this paragraph!

78

Many of this structures, behaiver, hunting strategies, animals born in captivity arent able to do them because they have to be learn from preview generation just like we do.

So again, the only diference is how complex we are able to go. Nothing else.

Bacteria and ants have more numbers and more total biomass weight than we do so… they rule the planet?

Many believe that bacteria have been spreading into space everytime a meteor runs into earth and sent them off into space among with earth fragments to colonise others planets so they have started space exploration much sooner than us.

Some may argue that we can chose were to go while they go randomly, but actually the best stratagy is the one with better results. Sometimes random can be better if you able to do it more often.

We just have diferent strategies. We are very individually resistent, adaptative, we move, think, build. They bet in large multipling numbers very fast and with high mutation probabilities. So they adapt and prosper not as individuals but as a specie.

The same way that ants have weak individuals but many of them, while cats have few but very resistent ones.

We are not more advanced just… more complex. Diferent nature strategies. Life have atchieve 2 high adaptative strategies of evolution.
One complex and dna stable, able to think, build, understand, resist to diferent condition.
Other one random, with high reproduction and mutation levels to be able to survive and adapt not as individual but as a specie.

79

There is an upcoming book taking the position I do. I heard its author interviewed (along with some dissenting scientists) on the BBC podcast Start the Week. He struck me as easily parrying all the objections with three main points:

(1) A lot of what you think is “native” isn’t, and vice versa;

(2) It is rare that invasive species are harmful;

(3) Attempts, other than on small islands, to remove invasive species are doomed to failure anyway.

In looking (unsuccessfully) for a similar interview with the author but in print form, I serendipitously discovered this, from 2011:

80

I do a fair amount of eye-rolling over the “invasive species” gambit when it comes to gardening. It’s amazing how some zealots are perfectly happy to use toxic herbicides to wipe out plants that have been growing in the U.S. for hundreds of years in the name of environmentalism. Speaking of which:

Suuure. Some of your best friends are snail darters. :dubious: