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New Zealands's Mysterious Sponge-like Creature
Kryptonomic writes: "New Zealand's marine experts are puzzled by the parasitic sponge-like animal that could threaten NZ's aquaculture industry. Apparently the animal, which so far has not been identified, kills all other sealife by embedding itself on the victim and slowly feeding on it. The parasite also reproduces asexually and could end up dominating the ecological niche it occupies."
Is that some kind of sponge that escaped from a kitchen sink somewhere and reverted to a life in the wild? The mind boggles...
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It seems that it filters out and "eats" plankton. However, it doesn't directly attack more solid sealife, it simply spreads over everything and smothers it. It doesn't seem to "inject" into (say) mussels or whatever's around to assimilate nutrients from it. (read the nz herald article)
Yeah, it seems bad for NZ sealife at the moment - man-of-war jellyfish have made their recent first appearance and a while ago there was a mysterious mussel parasite. So, it's not the first time that something wierd's turned up in the water. There was also an alge bloom a year or two back, which I don't think was ever totally explained.
I didn't know sponges even went to law school.
RMS has announced on the gnu.org site that the evils of software patents and proprietary software has kept us too busy reinventing the wheel to destroy evil sponges.
Linus Torvalds posted on comp.os.linux.sponges:
I couldn't care less what this evil sponge is doing. I'm just working to make my sponge the evillest it can be.
George Bush has announced the US would be 'declaring war' on sponges. This follows similar moves on drugs, civil liberties and reckless use of frisbees.
The unidentified evil sponge was not available for comment.
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This is the fungus that was growing on the OUTSIDE of mir when it hit the ocean in that region. Imagine the mutation rate of a fungus in a hard radiation enviroment. Fast enough mutation to become an extremephile living on the outside of MIR. Extreme enough to survive reentery? Shure...
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Did you even read the article?
It is not an indigenous species. Much like the rabbits and foxes and dogs of Australia, this sponge is not native to the NZ waters. There is no tough call here. You eradicate so as to preserve the ecological balance in the harbour.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
You forgot The West Island, aka Australia.
Every island -- several million sheep. *
And let's not forget about Waiheke Island, Great Barrier Island, the Three Sisters, etc., etc. Some of them are even populated. By people.
* (Okay, maybe not on Stewart or the Chathams, but it sounds better that way.)
I don't imagine it'll be a huge problem, just one more long-term nusance we could've lived without!
Just like deer used to be.
Yep, they were considered a huge pest a few decades ago. Now it's not at all difficult to find a 6 metre fence to keep the damn things inside.
No, black and green fly, various bacteria and other asexually reproducing organisms have been around far longer than mankind has.
There's pro's and cons to asexual reproduction. On the one hand, you reproduce more quickly (some black fly are even born pregnant!), on the other a disease can swing through and get all of your sibblings because you are genetic clones.
All known organisms except bacteria do both asexual and sexual reproduction. There seems to be limits to how many generations purely asexual reproduction can occur before the damage kills. Not quite sure how bacteria deal with this, but probably their genome is shorter and they have extensive genetic repair mechanisms and possibly use some DNA swapping, plus they reproduce really fast...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!">Not true. Most of the lower protozoa (things like Euglena) don't have sexual reproduction, and some
>animals and plants have secondarily lost it, like certain rotifers.
Not sure which animals have lost this; but protozoa and rotifers.
>Plus, even among organisms which do have sexual reproduction, many can reproduce asexually indefinitely.
There is some question over this apparently. How many generations do you allow the asexual reproduction to run before declaring that they can do so indefinitely? 30? 100? 1000? Why that number?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"When you hear someone advocating the extermination of an "invader" to protect "indigenous species" and a local "ecological balance", you are hearing someone who is either ignorant (often willfully) of ecology, or believes that humans can manage the ecosystem better than nature can.
Which are you?
reminds of a documentry I saw on Australia, where they guy was holding some small ultra-poisonious octupus like creature, with gloves, then puts it back into the tide pool, right next to his bare feet.
Man, I would of loved for it to bite him. Not that want him to die, but it would have been damn funny.
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