ALIENS IN OUR MIDST!

Here’s something we didn’t know until now. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) maintains a list called “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species” – and it doesn’t refer to little green men. Rather, it’s a list of plants and animals that have a serious impact on biological diversity or human activities.

On the list is everything from the common malaria mosquito to so-called “Killer Algae”, and – one that our Aussie readers will nod their heads at – the cane toad.

Also featured is the golden apple snail, which has been in the news in Singapore in recent times. Sounds innocuous, right? In fact, this native South American species is known to cause widespread damage to rice crops, wetlands and other vegetation all over the world. In all likelihood, it “hitchhikes” from country to country in aquarium tanks and nurseries holding other molluscs or fish species.

ERADICATING THE EGGS

Singapore has its own apple snail species – one that’s native to Southeast Asia – but the golden apple snail is here, too, unfortunately. And one big difference between them is that whereas “our” apple snail lays a few hundred eggs at a time, the golden variety lays up to a thousand.

In March of this year, workers from Singapore’s water agency PUB had to remove huge clusters of pink roe from the snails that had built up along the rocky edges of the city’s reservoirs. NParks are monitoring the presence of the golden apple snails, and though they haven’t detected any in the freshwater streams of the island’s nature reserves yet, they say they’ll remove them if they do.

Find the full list of 100 nasties at iucngisd.org/ gisd/100_worst.php.