Killing Rats Could Save Coral Reefs (bbc.co.uk)

The much maligned rat is not a creature many would associate with coral reefs. But scientists studying reefs on tropical islands say the animals directly threaten the survival of these ecosystems. From a report: A team working on the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean found that invasive rats on the islands are a "big problem" for coral reefs. Rats decimate seabird populations, in turn decimating the volume of bird droppings -- a natural coral fertiliser. The findings are published in Nature. Scientists now advocate eradicating rats from all of the islands to protect these delicate marine habitats.

Comments

Re:"Decimate"... I don't think that means what you

[Oswald McWeany]

...think it means...

But then, you American, aren't you...

To 'decimate' means to kill ONE TENTH of a group, hence the "dec" part of the word...

You're right in that the word originally meant kill one tenth. But it's also worth pointing out that "Awesome" was originally a synonym for "Awful". Somehow the meaning of awesome has completely swapped over time. In the 1800's if you said two people had intercourse, people would assume that they had had a conversation. In the 1800's if you said two people conversed, people would think that they had just had sex.

Words change meaning over time, and yes, it frequently is because people don't understand the real meaning and use them incorrectly. "Decimate" has been used so long (incorrectly) to mean to destroy a large percent that that is now the most commonly understood meaning of the word.

Personally, that grates with me a little too- but I try not to get too hung up on the fact that the modern meaning isn't what I originally learnt. The meaning of words change over time, they always have... All you can do is try and keep up and pick out meaning from context.

Some people think that's awesome, others don't.