Most Disappointing Headline of 2009

This one, from Discovery Channel News:  Great Lakes Facing Wide Alien Species Invasion. Turns out they mean things like zebra mussels and blueback herring, not Martians or Triffids. Darn.

To be sure, invasive species are a big problem -- though interestingly one hears of it more in North America and Australia than in other continents. My suspicion is that since the human societies in North America and Australia are wealthy and trade a lot, there's more opportunity for species invasion. But is there also something Darwinian going on here? Are the organisms of the Europe-Asia-Africa island more competitive? Or is it simply that millennia of human activity and species transplanting in those lands have already eliminated the native species vulnerable to invasives?

There's also an oddly aesthetic component to this issue:  we worry over zebra mussels and lampreys in the Great Lakes because they clog pipes and kill fish we like. But we're also taking great pains to preserve the "invasive" species of honeybees in North America. Not that I'm complaining -- but we shouldn't fool ourselves that we're preserving the "natural" environment so much as we are weeding a garden. 

Comments

[zayzayem]

I read recently (PLoS?) about Invasive ants in Turkey. I don't think Europe is immune to Invasive species. Even outside of island nations like the UK.

Found another PLoS article that looks at it:
Shirley SM, Kark S (2006) Amassing Efforts against Alien Invasive Species in Europe. PLoS Biol 4(8): e279 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040279

This article points to DAISIE - a European invasive species watch organisation.

Looks like North American and Australian species are invading the Motherlands. Revenge is sweet.

I remember a drunken discussion some friends of mine had once - and we decided that we could save endangered species by just transplanting them to foreign environments, where obviously they will thrive.