Tracking invasive species? Follow the people
Islands and populated coastal areas are the world’s “hotspots” for invasive species, which can upend entire ecosystems and drive local animals and plants to extinction, a study reported. The first global census of nonnative fauna and flora found the highest concentrations in Hawaii, New Zealand’s North Island, and the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia. The 50th US state is beset with alien species, including rats, feral pigs, and the fire tree, which crowds out indigenous plants , in each of eight categories that include reptiles, fish, ants, spiders, mammals and amphibians.
Disease-bearing mosquitoes that arrived in the early 19th century have wiped out half the island chain’s tropical birds, with several other species on the brink. Florida is the top hotspot among mainland regions, boasting a rogues’ gallery of invaders: walking catfish, giant iguanas, mammal-crushing pythons, and monster African land snails that gobble up native plants and carry a parasite that causes meningitis in humans. The California coast and northern Australia are also rife with uninvited guests.
The new map of intruder species points unmistakably to how they got there, said Wayne Dawson, a biologist at Durham University in northeastern England and lead author of the study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. “We have shown that regions with higher human population density, and greater wealth, have more established alien species,” he told. Not all living things that take root in foreign soils or waters cause harm. But those that do are among the main drivers , along with habitat loss, hunting for food, pollution and climate change of wildlife decline around the world, experts say.
Creatures that have evolved in isolation may find themselves helpless against unfamiliar predators or pathogens. Forests in Guam are eerily silent, for example, because the brown tree snake has devoured most of the island’s birds (or their eggs) over the last half century. Newcomers often marginalize native species: Asian carp now dominate some US rivers, grey squirrels have replaced red ones in London parks, and kudzu, a perennial vine introduced to the US 150 years ago as an ornamental bush, has crowded out many plants.
Altered ecosystems
Benign or not, the overwhelming majority of invasive species are brought to new places by humans. Sometimes it happens on purpose, for pest control. But attempts to engineer nature can backfire plantation owners in Hawaii imported mongooses to eat the rats that had infested sugar cane fields. But rats are nocturnal, and thus continued to thrive. The diurnal mongooses ate ground-nesting birds instead. More often, invasive critters spread by hitching rides with cargo. The deadly Asian hornet is thought to have landed in Europe a dozen years ago in a shipment of pottery from China.
Ballast water in cargo ships pumped in and out of huge tanks to keep vessels balanced is also a major conduit, transporting thousands of aquatic species, including bacteria and viruses, unnoticed across the globe every day. Under the terms of an international treaty going into effect in September, all big ships will be required to have equipment to treat their ballast water. “We are arguably creating a new ‘Pangaea’,” said Dawson, referring to the super-continent that joined most of Earth’s land masses some 335 million years ago. “The consequences of such a virtual continent are profound: The creation of novel communities with mixtures of species from around the world, altered ecosystems, and extinctions of some species,” he said.—AFP