S. purpurea in california?

[KingShaman]

"I think what JBL may mean is that nature has a way of working things out. Look at the sundews in the Hawaiian islands (or almost all the plants and animals there.) They rafted over by chance, hopping hundreds to thousands of miles between little chains of sparsely distributed islands. It wasn't like they evolved there hand in hand with everything else. I'm sure they caused a big stir when they arrived on the scene." seedjar

I'm not sure of where your going with this but Hawaii has many endemic species of plants and animals that can be found no where else in the world. In the time that people have lived on the islands many native species have disappeared either from introduced species or from people themselves. Also if your refering to D. anglica it is only found on one island in a few places, the island of Kauai, the oldest of all the current islands. These aren't your average D. anglica and some one correct if I'm wrong, but the D. anglica on Kauai don't form hibernacula the rosette simply gets smaller during the winter and the plants are smaller then there continental cousins. I don't mean to be nit picking, but you just happened to choose the place where most of my family lives.

 

[seedjar]

I'm not saying those species aren't defined as endemic, KS. What I'm saying is that Hawaii was underwater 70 million years ago while the sundews were already off to a running start. Much of the terrestrial life on the Hawaiian islands did not arise there independently but came to live there by chance events. I'm not entirely familiar with the geological history of Hawaii, but I am fairly sure that it has never been connected to a land mass. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Though the D. anglica in Hawaii is distinct from other strains (I think you're right about no hibernacula) it's had 70 million years - approximately half the age of the flowering plants - to get there. But we can be fairly sure that the Hawaiian form of the English sundew didn't arise in Hawaii, independent from the sundews which originated on the mainland (was it in Africa?) If they had, we wouldn't classify them as sundews at all; they would almost certainly be genetically distinct by a factor far greater than the difference between the species of sundews, and accordingly we would give them their own taxa.
Rather, we don't even classify them as a unique species - they are so close genetically that they are only distinct by their growth habit. Likewise, many other sundews, and plants in general, display this kind of variability; the strains of Drosera intremedia have temperate forms, which form hibernacula, and tropical forms which do not. It's likely that you could selectively breed a population of temperate-form D. intremedia to not require dormancy, or breed a Hawaiian-form D. anglica to recover it's habit of producing hibernacula, because it is a close ancestor of a plant which does produce them.
Remember that Hawaii wasn't forming until the age of dinosaurs was well into it's close. I believe that most of the families of plants and many of the families of animals that we see today were already distinct and well established at this time, approximately 98% of the way between the supposed origin of life and today. The species that occur on Hawaii do not defy taxonomy and require their own kingdoms and families - they are distinct relatives of types of creatures that abound all over the world. So, whether they are endemic is not really a question, because no matter what, they're only 70 million years new at the most. I'm not saying that those species are not unique, but they had to come from somewhere, and when they finally got to Hawaii, they managed to cooperate well enough with each other to survive for an entire geological epoch, and even speciate to become distinct from their progenetors that crossed the ocean.
~Joe

 

[Treaqum]

I guess Barry has not seen this thread he would give you an earful about infase CPs. Ever heard of U. inflata in Wahington state. Talk about invasive its chocking all the lakes. If you want an earfull claim its not happening or worth bothering with while he's around.
you can google U. inflata Washington and you will have tons of site. Many on advice of how to kill it off. I wonder if you got aome from there it you could claim it's location to be Washington State.

 

[seedjar]

I'm not trying to say that invasive species aren't a problem, I'm just saying they're a problem to humans here and now, and not some huge threat to all life forever. The reason that we think of invasive species as bad is because they disrupt the balance of our environment and eventually make it unlivable for us. Humans rely on having a place to live where we can grow food and take shelter without much disease, predation or pests. When invasive species come and start killing things off, it becomes harder to grow crops, disease-carrying pests start relying on our stores of resources, and disease becomes rampant. That's the nuts and bolts of why it's to our benefit not to introduce species. There's also a moral reason - the Golden Rule, leave things as you found them, etc. Disrupting the environment makes life harder on us, and it makes life harder for the other big fuzzy megafauna that we like to sympathize with, so people endorse conservation. Given that, I don't think anybody with a serious background in ecology is going say, "We shouldn't introduce non-native species because they might become invasive and end all life on Earth." I don't think invoking a doomsday scenario is necessary. There are more immediate, less far-flung reasons to be concerned about invasive species.
Beyond that, invasions don't spell the end of life in a region. There's usually a change of some sort, which tends to involve a loss of biodiversity. But this only a problem for creatures that need a diverse environment (like humans, crop plants and livestock.) Life, generally speaking, will continue. Many organisms benefit from a lack of diversity; things like diseases, parasites and decomposers. The problem is that we don't like those creatures that do well when an ecosystem is in decline (like mosquitos and rats.) So in many ways, to preserve biodiversity and always call it "good" is to make a value judgement about which types of creatures deserve to have it easier. In nature, progress goes both ways.
~Joe

 

[Treaqum]

Big fuzzy? no I'm thinking little and green. Seedjar you don't happen to know what a Tai-Tai is do you? (I'm not sure if that is the most accepted name). It is an invasive shrub from Asia that grows in Boggy areas expecailly area on the Panhandle O'Florida. And loves S. leuco sites. The leucos either die from light deprivation or die down to rhizomes for years until a large fire comes through and burns most of the Tai-Tai out. I was told this by the Manager of the Bog on the west side of Pensacola. Shoot what's that State park called?

 

[seedjar]

Heh, well, big and fuzzy isn't the end-all of descriptors for sympathetic life-forms, just a good indicator. Generally speaking, we concern ourselves with preserving things that are big, noticable and pleasing to the eye. Everybody wants to save the wolves and the pandas and the pretty flowers, but conservation efforts for salamanders don't often try the, "it's so loveable!" approach to gain public attention. When bugs start going extinct, you don't see special-interest news reports with teary-eyed environmentalists stroking a roach and saying, "this is such a majestic, beautiful creature - it's a tragedy that it may soon be extinct in the wild."
~Joe

 

[Treaqum]

The day the news coverers enviromentalists stroking a roach saying "this is such a majestic, beautiful creature-it's a tragedy tat it may soon be extinct in the wild" is the day I reverse my ideas on the enviroment.

 

[Treaqum]

That's also the day I know humanity is screwed and has no hope left.

 

[lol]

I live in mission valley.

 

[KingShaman]

Seedjar,

I get your point and didn't mean to put you on the defensive. You are correct the islands have never been linked to land masses, and the oldest island Kauai is only about 5.5 million years old. Also the Hawaiian archipelago started about 65 million years ago. As for the sundews on Kauai I simply meant to state they aren't invasive and two they have been on Kauai long enough to make some adaptations. Besides the one truely invasive species around the world would be Homo sapiens.

Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono

 

[CNCreefer]

Quote[/b] ]I live in mission valley.

I live about 2 miles from you, on the other side of the 8/805 merge.

 

[The Griffin]

I presume this is the Menicino(sp?) bog and I beleive it was the 70s, though I could be mistaken. I think some of the early members of the ICPS did this bog as an experiment. The only native species was D. rotundifolia.
There was an article in the 80s in CPN where D'Amato and Leo Song and Joe Mazrimas revisited the cite 10 years later. Dionaea and Heliamphora had a pretty poor showing(more disappointing for them on the former), and the Nepenthes were no where to be seen, but others(as the photos showed) seem to do well.

Cheers,

Joe

 

[Treaqum]

Yeah peter wrote in his book I think it was the Heliamphora got stolen

 

[Brian_W]

I would like to visit the bog in California. I would be interesting to see so many different species of carnivores living in the same place. I agree with what seedjar has written. Nature always has a way of keeping things in check, even if it takes a long time. A human can't even count to a million, let alone comprehend what that amount of time has done to the earth.

I've seen pictures of massive clumps of S. purpurea that were introduced in European bogs. If they are choking out native species, then their own future in the bog is doomed. Forty years isn't a very long time. http://www.bestcarnivorousplants.com/CP_Photos/Sarracenia_purpurea_purpurea_Switzerland_Copyright_K_Pasek_02.jpg

 

[JBL]

I would like to add a little fuel for thought on the 'invasive species' issue by virtue of quoting from a text. In the book 'Evolution' by Carl Zimmer, a popular and easily read overview, pgs. 178-179 are entitled 'Alien Invasion'. If you can find this in a library, or you have it, you might want to give it a read.

I won't quote the many examples of the extent of human introduced 'invaders', but would like to point out two concluding statements made by the author:

1) "At the rate at which biological invasions are taking place today, scientists suspect they are becoming one of the most important threats to biodiversity worldwide, ranking close to habitat destruction in their deadliness." pg. 181

2) "Biological invasions may do more than help create a mass extinction; they may leave nature altered long after we're gone". pg. 181

I'm only offering this for additional information, from one source only, for those interested in this topic. I'm not taking any stand, or making any value based declarations here. If someone has read this and wants to offer comments (Seedjar maybe?), I'd be interested in reading them. I'm not an expert--I'm just one little piece in the one little link of a big chain...

 

[seedjar]

JBL, while I don't think I've read that book in particular, I do know about the types of studies that back up those quotes of yours, and I agree with them. But you must ask, "Why is biodiversity important?" The answer is, it is important to us humans because humans cannot survive comfortably without it. Another aspect of the answer relates to your second quote there; loss of biodiversity is bad because it has become part of the common human ethic to try to minimize our impact on nature. Ultimately, I think this altruistic attitude towards the natural order of our environment is also motivated purely by survival; a while ago, people started to recognize that if all the plants were dead, or giant swarms of mosquitos began plauging the land, it would be a bad thing, and since those kinds of things tend to happen in ecologies lacking in diversity, we want to preserve what biodiversity we have.
Now, I'm going to make a broad generalization here, so any experts, please bear with me. There are some characteristics that are common among ecosystems that are in decline (losing biodiversity) and those in advancement (gaining biodiversity.) Many of these characteristics have to do with the kinds of survival strategies work best for living things in that ecosystem. Stable and advancing ecosystems tend to have a lot of species doing a lot of different things, so parasitic behavior is discouraged, because parasites are usually specialized to exploit one species or group of species. Additionally, because things are developing and not dying off particularly fast, parasitized species are adapting to their parasites continually. Thus, disease and pests (parasites) are usually at equilibrium with other members of the ecosystem.
In a system in decline, certain species die off faster than others by nature of their varying degrees of fitness and distribution - endangered orchids die off faster than dandelions. Thus, there are certain species which quickly come to dominate the population of a system in decline. These species become easy targets for parasites, and often fall to extinction, taking with them any dependant species. This makes room for new "most fit" species which is most populous, and becomes the new target of parasites.
Thus, for carnivores/herbivores like us humans, and the primary producers like plants that we depend upon for food, environments in decline are not pleasant places to be. I won't go into a detailed explanation of all the other aspects of a decline that are bad for things that share our general life strategy.
It's not that preserving biodiversity isn't a good idea, it's just a little self-serving to always make it out as the "right" thing to do, like it's what nature wants, because in nature, pestilence and even mass extinction happens. I think a healthier attitude is to minimize human impacts on biodiversity and other aspects of ecology, and otherwise try to let nature take it's course.
~Joe

 

[JBL]

Quote[/b] (seedjar @ May 30 2005,7:14)]It's not that preserving biodiversity isn't a good idea, it's just a little self-serving to always make it out as the "right" thing to do, like it's what nature wants, because in nature, pestilence and even mass extinction happens. I think a healthier attitude is to minimize human impacts on biodiversity and other aspects of ecology, and otherwise try to let nature take it's course.
~Joe

Hi Seedjar,
While I do agree with your opinions about the relative nature of our interest in preserving biodiversity (i.e., self preservation), there are other reasons (e.g., spiritual for many, humanistic moralistic for others).  Yes, it could also be argued that this is 'self preservation' of another sort.

I'm sorry that I'm only quoting part of what you say.  I can't really add to the first part because I agree.  But to say that it is self-serving to advocate preserving  biodiversity as if it's the 'right' thing to do, and then to say that it is a 'healthier attitude...to minimize human impacts on biodiversity...and otherwise try to let nature take its course" seem to be two different ways to say the same thing--hands off (as much as we can) of Mother Nature.  Now, if I do something, I generally do it for a reason--the one that I hope and think is the right one--that is a human thing to do.  Don't both actions produce the same results?  That is, 'doing it because you think it's 'right', or simply doing it without assigning any moral or 'self-serving' rational.  Why bother to minimize human impacts on biodiversity at all, if it is not the right thing to do, not only as a means of self preservation, but also as a means of expressing our spiritual or moralistic nature, or maybe just because we as a species like a whole lot of different things (like variations of Sarracenia).  Is that wrong?  No, nature does not know or want anything in particular, and yes, mass extinctions do occur, but should we consciously engage in behaviors to hasten such events?  I know that you would not advocate that, but people most often are inclined to do things because it is 'the right thing'--whatever that may be.  Of course, we're not always right (depending on who's observing the action), now are we?

PS--The quotes from the author do not assign any relativistic value to the course of such action (rapid introduction of non-native species). They simply state what is happening, and what may be long term effects. We imply why this may or may not be a good thing, and having a good reason incents people into action--whatever that action may be...

 

[seedjar]

I guess what I'm trying to advocate for is a more careful assessment of what actually needs conservation. For example, I think we should move endangered plants out of construction zones, because obviously, if we weren't paving over them, they'd have a chance. But there are preservation efforts going on for lots of different things, and I'm not certain that we're responsible for all of the changes that the preservation  is trying to prevent.
Some natually occuring changes might be beneficial, but ecological science seems to have spend all of it's time naming what we shouldn't do and how to undo it, and no time finding what we can and should do, so there seems to be this prevailing attitude that everything must remain exactly how it's been since the biological sciences first documented it, or nature will crumble right out from under us. I think that maybe (MAYBE - nobody seems to have bothered to check) there are forests receding into scrubland somewhere for a good reason, and that change will help nature cope with human involvement. Or, maybe raccoons eating out of trashcans is a good thing. Who knows - my point is that all we're hoping to keep the Earth healthy and alive, but by "preserving" we're often just creating lab samples of things that were on the outs anyways, and not necessarily ensuring a healthy planet in the future. After all, nature is constantly under change, and isn't "preservation" to prevent change? I think that we need to create a new paradigm for assisting declining ecosystems. Instead of filling them back up with species that didn't work to begin with, we need to find ways to encourage the developement of species (or populations in general) that persist and cooexist successfully.
~Joe

 

[JBL]

Quote[/b] (seedjar @ May 30 2005,8:19)]I guess what I'm trying to advocate for is a more careful assessment of what actually needs conservation. For example, I think we should move endangered plants out of construction zones, because obviously, if we weren't paving over them, they'd have a chance. But there are preservation efforts going on for lots of different things, and I'm not certain that we're responsible for all of the changes that the preservation  is trying to prevent.
Some natually occuring changes might be beneficial, but ecological science seems to have spend all of it's time naming what we shouldn't do and how to undo it, and no time finding what we can and should do, so there seems to be this prevailing attitude that everything must remain exactly how it's been since the biological sciences first documented it, or nature will crumble right out from under us. I think that maybe (MAYBE - nobody seems to have bothered to check) there are forests receding into scrubland somewhere for a good reason, and that change will help nature cope with human involvement. Or, maybe raccoons eating out of trashcans is a good thing. Who knows - my point is that all we're hoping to keep the Earth healthy and alive, but by "preserving" we're often just creating lab samples of things that were on the outs anyways, and not necessarily ensuring a healthy planet in the future. After all, nature is constantly under change, and isn't "preservation" to prevent change? I think that we need to create a new paradigm for assisting declining ecosystems. Instead of filling them back up with species that didn't work to begin with, we need to find ways to encourage the developement of species (or populations in general) that persist and cooexist successfully.
~Joe

Very valid and well thought out points IMO.  Often, we preserve the endangered because we like it, among other reasons.  We shouldn't try to reintroduce something into a habitat that's rapidly changed and won't support it, because that's wasteful .  Some naturally occuring changes (e.g., bog to meadow/field to woodland) will result no matter what we do and at what expense.  It does make sense to see what we can do, and not just the 'shalt nots', but I think a good rule of thumb when it comes to randomly introducing new species, is to think before we act.  This thread started because someone (oh, yeah--it was you, right?) noticed that non-native cps were introduced by an individual or group of individuals.  This seems to be vastly different from conservation efforts (unless D. capensis is in danger, and this was being done by scientists as a CP 'zoo'  

)

My opinions are very much in agreement with yours, Seedjar.  I just don't want anyone reading this thread to think that introducing non-natives is acceptable because time and nature will heal all in the end, and all of this is relative because of our human interest.  I do not support individuals introducing a species simply because they know they can grow, and they like them.

 

[Treaqum]

Hey everyone you should all go out and get some Kudzu and plant it in your yard for summer. Then in fall we can have this discussion again. I beleve many people will agree that non-natives are sometimes extremely bad. Oh BTW I would recommend you be prepared fro a tree or two falling or dieing from lack of light.