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100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species
Ant writes "100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species list says: 'Invasive species have been recognised globally as a major threat to biodiversity (the collected wealth of the world's species of plants, animals and other organisms) as well as to agriculture and other human interests. It is very difficult to choose 100 invasive species, from around the world, that really are "worse" than any others. Species and their interactions with ecosystems are very complex. Some species may have invaded only a restricted region, but have a huge probability of expanding, and causing further great damage (e.g. see Boiga irregularis: the brown tree snake). Other species may already be globally widespread, and causing cumulative but less visible damage. Many biological families or genera contain large numbers of invasive species, often with similar impacts; in these cases one representative species was chosen. The one hundred species aim to collectively illustrate the range of impacts caused by biological invasion.'"
C'mon, Humans have got to rank someplace on that list.
First Post!
Apparently #38 is the common cat. I hadn't thought of cats as invasive, but I'm surprised that it's considered so invasive. I imagine they are so high on the list because of their numbers, and few people think of them in this way.
-Adam
the Jackson family! the worst offender in this species seems to have an affinity for places where the sun does not shine, especially on prepubescent boys.
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
What, no snakeheads on this list?
welcome our new invasive alien overlords.
So will they remove all limits on Rainbow Trout now? :-)
That would be nice...
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
What about those face huggers from Aliens?
I would say:
1) Homo Sapiens
To quote the entry: "few single species occupy as many diverse environments as humans"
Americans
Cthulhu and the other elder gods listed?
It might be millions years between incursions, but the effect they have on the biosphere is pretty dramatic.
Mass extinctions, tectonic plate shifts, pole shifts, axis shifts, etc, etc, etc.
I have to concur with what others have said: homo sapiens should be on that list.
Let me put it this way: If humans had not been around, how many of the species on that list would still be invasive?
~UP
Eat the Path.
Until I RTFA, I thought this was going to be some wacky space alien/sci fi poll and had thought out MY choice (I'm not telling now!), read the article, and was crestfallen. Never mind...
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
No3 is the lovely myna bird. Rattus rattus us down at 80, near the brown trout. Seems like a strange list to me...
But what about the predators?!?
Of the problem species, are trees really that big of a problem? It seems like they'd be by far the easiest to eradicate as they multiply slowly, don't move real fast, and can be killed quite easily with a cheap chainsaw.
I granted don't know much about invasive species, but this list seems a bit odd in its priorities.
AccountKiller
Reported only yesterday, a ladybird being sold around the world for pest control may out-compete
s tm
native ladybirds, and eat the eggs of butterflies
and lacewings.
They also blemish soft fruits and their acrid defensive chemicals taint wines.
Harmonia axyridis - the Harlequin Ladybird
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/3715120.
Bastard things eat everything. We (the people of New Zealand) spend *so* much money trapping and killing possums each year. The sad part is that they were deliberately introduced to stimulate a possum fur industry.
Same country has just removed its' moratorium on genetically engineered crops - it seems we, as a nation, will never bloody learn.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Great article. Thanks Ant.
Introduced species brought in to stimulate this (profit) or eradicate that ("pests"), have brought about consequences to our generation and those after us, the obvious one being the trampling and eradication of native species that have adapted to their particular region over many generations -- key players in that area's natural system. These are being dominated by "foreigners" -- many of which have made the list -- often with consequences that may not be discovered for many years.
I have family in Hawai'i, and anyone who's flown to or from Honolulu Int'l knows how strict the authorities are there. Fragile, geologically young, natural systems are especially at risk for species introduction, as evidenced by the mongoose (brought in to eradicate another species), as one example. The mongoose has seriously threatened the native bird populations on Oahu and many neighbor islands.
It's fun to tackle serious issues with a touch of humor. Make no mistake, though. This is a very serious issue that is being taken very seriously, especially by those fragile island regions most threatened by these invasions, and even by geologically older regions dealing with invasive ivys and other (introduced) pests that cost money to deal with.
Number 1 on the list is a tree. A goddamn tree! But where's those bug eyed greys on the list? They're not on there, are they? I smell a coverup! I don't think a tree's ever given anyone an anal probe (but then again, I'm not a botanist).
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
I received over 30 bites on my left foot while working in my yard last weekend. They take a month to heal and leave a scar that lasts about five years. Poison isn't nasty enough for them, but I don't know how to make ants suffer.
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Yeah I think it's stupid for NZ to allow genetic engineering stuff on their soil.
Agriculture plays a major role in NZ's economy. And "New Zealand" is an established "brand" recognized for being clean/unspoiled/uncontaminated. Turning away US nuclear power ships and all that.
If you guys remain GM free, then _when_ (not if) someone in the rest of the world screws up, you guys stand to make a big profit.
Look at the state of "British Beef". They're going nowhere. . The only beef I'd think is 99.99% safe to eat is either NZ beef or Kobe beef. The latter is prohibitively expensive. The former is the cheapest for the quality you get.
NZ has volcanic soil, mild climate, so grazing animals do very very well (no need for barns, grass grows real fast). I really don't see ANY need for NZ to have GM stuff.
Scenario: someone introduces pig genes into cattle, and lets it spread. If NZ had remained 100% GM free, then the best known safe kosher(jew OK)/halal(muslim OK) source of beef would be NZ. NZ can charge monopoly prices.
NZ people can do GM stuff, but don't allow it in NZ. Do it as a JV in Singapore or Switzerland or something.
So I really think it is a stupid move for NZ to allow GM stuff on their soil.
I know we sure have a problem with star thistle in CA. Our state even has it's own "Encycloweedia"
California Native Plant Society has a pretty good list of weed sites as well. I never knew how much you see growing in the countryside was a product of an invasion.
1. Humans
2. Starbucks
3. Talk Shows
4. Neoconservatives
5. "Alternative" Bands
6. Cell-Phone-Talking SUV Drivers
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
You should take issue with the people who invented the alphabet, since they're the ones who put 'c' before 'd' and 'r'.
that that is is that that is not is not
So will they remove all limits on Rainbow Trout now?
Reminds me of a recent story about flathead catfish:
As long as it tastes better than the species it supplants, I ain't got no problem.(2) Martians
(3) Aliens
(4) Body Snatchers
(5) Kang & Kodos
(6) Marvin the Martian
(7) Mechagodzilla
(8) Silastic Armorfiends
(9) Young Republicans
(10) Brain Leeches of Carotene Beta
There are probably two ways of judging how bad an invasive species is: the negative effects on other "native" species and ecology, and how hard it is to eradicate. As an example lets look at the salt cedar , which is bad on both of these counts.
This plant is a huge success of natural selection. It can survive in all sorts of environments, and scales wonderfully eeking a survival in the middle of the desert as a shrub or thrive in wet forest as a tree, but always leeching every and all the resources available to it. It has an extensive root system which soaks up all the water available, which not only chokes off local trees, but prevents ground water from replenishing streams and aquifers, hurting the ecology of the entire region. It is near worthless as a source of food for animals, unlike the plants which it displaces.
Getting rid of it is not quite as easy as using a chainsaw. As I mentioned, it has an extensive root system which survives and resprouts after the above-ground portion of the plant has been cut down. The salt ceder also salinates the soil, making harder for other plants to regrow if the infestation has been there a long time before removal. Most places resort to pesticide to get rid of it, either by spraying areas that are completely infested, or by poisoning the trunks of individual trees that have been cut down. Also, "just chainsawing it", is not as easy as it sounds. It is an extremely time consuming task. Likewise, pesticides are not something that you want to go overboard with. In general these trees have been spreading over decades and we are just now getting around to dealing with them, so you don't want to just rip out all the salt cedars as fast as possible without a plan for reintroducing native plants.
Here in New Mexico, the salt cedar is concidered to be one of the greatest threats to our water supply, and a great deal of effort is being made to eradicate it, and progress is being made, but it is necisarrily slow.
I was going to reply, but I just failed my sanity check. BLEEEAAAAAAAYAYAYAYARRGGHGHHHH!!!
For all those who complain that #1 is a tree, the list appears to be alphabetically ordered.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
When you release beetles to consume aphids, for instance, it is a bad assumption to think that the beetles will take care of the aphid problem, and then having exhausted their food source, will then simply die off or dwindle to an acceptable-to-humans number- more likely, they'll choose alternate food sources, which may include things humans did not intend for them to eat. I'm certainly not the sort to suggest that all human modification of the environment is awful and we must leave all of nature pristine- for one thing, it's not as though animals and plants themselves leave nature unspoiled. Also, in certain cases like food crops and game animals, invasive species have been extremely beneficial to humans. While they might have made the list here, I think many humans are perfectly fine with lakes and rivers brimming with largemouth bass and trout. In the same way, while "invasive," and sometimes even destructive, few humans would put the domestic cat on the same level of infamy as Dutch elm disease, kudzu, or fire ants- in fact, they've traditionally been valued for controlling populations of two of the other members on the list. But, we must remember that animals and plants are not machines that can be operated to do the will of humanity- however much we may think ourselves their masters, at a higher level they obey their genes. And their genes want them to reproduce without limit.
On the subject of deliberately introduced invasive species, this entry sounds like a truly amazing creature:
The predatory "rosy wolf snail" (also known as the "cannibal snail") is native to the south-eastern United States, especially Florida. It has been introduced to islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, also to Bermuda and the Bahamas, as a putative biological control agent for another alien species, the giant African snail (Achatina fulica). There is no good evidence that control of A. fulica has been effected, but E. rosea has caused the extinction of numerous endemic partulid tree snails in French Polynesia and has been heavily implicated in the extinction or at least decline of other species of snails wherever it has been introduced, notably in Hawaii. Common Names: cannibal snail, Rosige Wolfsschnecke, rosy wolf snail
I mean, I just would like to see this thing in action- you tend to think of most predatory animals as made for pursuit, capable of bursts of speed to chase down prey. Then you have this snail....
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Rattus rattus (mammal)
:P
A native of the Indian sub-continent, this rat has now spread throughout the world. It will feed on and damage almost any edible thing. Ship rats are widespread in forest and woodlands as well as being able to live in and around buildings. A very agile rat, it often frequents the tree tops searching for food and nesting there in bunches of leaves and twigs.
Common Names: Black rat, black rat, blue rat, bush rat, European house rat, Hausratte, roof rat, ship rat
Common, Rattus Rattus? Why event USE a latin name? That's like saying Piggus Piggus.
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
It always pisses me off when people live in some fantasyland where "nature" is always in perfect harmony and humans no nothing but upset it.
And it always pisses me off that the same people who make this argument use it to justify human greed-induced environmental degradation.
Every time someone points out that we're crapping in our own nest someone else trots this line out to make the claim that we have the right because we're products of nature ourselves. It's a two-faced argument because we do everything we can to isolate ourselves from the realities of nature. We drive cars and travel in planes to overcome the physical limits of our natural speed. We build air-tight buildings and install air conditioning because we don't like the natural climate. We genetically engineer our food because we want greater profit from its production. We spew the waste of our unnatural lifestyle back into the natural environment that is the very source of our well-being. That's why your argument is morally bankrupt. Until you live within the bounds that nature has proscribed, you're not a natural force in the environment. You are a very unnatural force.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
"For all the talk of freakish foreign creatures invading the Great Lakes in recent decades, none has come close to the devastation caused by an unwelcome pest that's been present more than 80 years, the sea lamprey."
way off topic...but i read that sig and it just cracked me up...heh you got my vote decided!
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Best 'First Post' I ever saw.