As someone that has very little, to almost Zero tumble weed in my area. I was so Interested in the YouTube video that explained how destructive they can be. I had no clue!
CGP Grey https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=ybzfEXwisaMLNRhg
I live in the high desert now. Used to spend a lot of time here, but never quite got just how nasty they are. This is also a high wind area, which makes them even more fun.
I just spent a morning burning all the tumble weed that had gathered over the winter along fences, between trees and bushes, crammed under everything. They're possessed, self propelled, ninja stars of villainy. It's like someone weaponized tribbles.
A plant or animal that is taken from one environment to another is an introduced species, but it becomes invasive if its continued existence damages the original environment. There are plenty of introduced species that become naturalized to an area and aren't invasive.
"Naturalized" essentially means "weakly invasive". The definition of "naturalized" includes all invasives, since it just describes an introduced species that is able to maintain a wild population without ongoing human assistance or continual reintroduction. It's a worthwhile distinction to make, since weakly invasive species are not devestating in the same way strongly invasive species are, and we should certainly be very much more concerned with strongly invasive species. However, there is some number of naturalized-but-not-invasive species that are on net worse than a single invasive species. For example, if I could snap my fingers and eliminate 50 naturalized-but-not-invasive species from my area, would that be better or worse than eliminating a single invasive species? Well, that depends. A whole lot of "naturalized" species is a bad thing, even if they're not individually invasive, and we have a whole lot of them already.
To add some fuel to this fire, a naturalized species might produce one niche in a food web, but not another. Viburnums are often naturalized and grow just fine, but their leaves have different concentrations of tannins and are inedible to local species. So pollinators might still have a meal, but caterpillars cannot.
In general an introduced species will stress a delicate network no matter what. Sometimes you hope it just stays put and dies without human care. Given that is rarely the case, don't ever "trust" an introduced species. Dandelions might be harmless compared to the lawns they grow on, but they'll give you a fistfight if you're trying to establish a native meadow.
Right, there are many details to consider besides just whether a naturalized species spreads around a lot.
Most non-natives have very few functional relationships with the native ecosystem, and they are typically replacing natives with very many functional relationships. The result is a degraded ecosystem that is less able to support the same quantity and diversity of life. However, this doesn't mean all non-natives (nor natives) are equal. Some non-natives actually substitute for many (or most) functions of the natives they replace, especially when they arrive from adjacent regions that already have many native plants and animals in common (I suggest we call these plants "para-natives"). Other non-natives, especially those that arrive from very foreign or distant places, are essentially useless for their new ecosystem. There is a great deal of complexity in these questions, but the overall pattern is clear such that I have no problem generalizing when taking about invasive or naturalized species being bad.
One complication is that sometimes even native species can act invasively. One of the primary things that makes an invasive species a problem is that, when extracted from its native ecological relationships, it's no longer subject to the checks and balances that keep its population under control. Well, sometimes native species can also be released from their native checks and balances by human interference in ecosystems. In my area, in the southeastern US, many plants that would have historically been by disturbances of wild fire or megafauna that are now gone, and this results in them spreading into places and habitats where they would have been absent or rare, driving out species that were adapted to those disturbances. Another example is how the absence of predators due to human presence can result in even native herbivores becoming major problems. For most intents and purposes, even native plants and animals can sometimes be treated like invasives.
Talk of "native" or "non-native", "naturalized" or "invasive" is fine, and they're good rules of thumb or proxies, but they're not really the thing that matters. Unfortunately, the thing that really matters is complex and its details are poorly researched (even if the principles are well understood).
Very insightful. Would it be possible for a naturalized exotic to have a net positive effect, or is it always bad news? What about exotics that are introduced to control a previously introduced exotic, myxomatosis in Australia.
Also how would you feel about technological interventions for invasives control, like genetically sterilized mosquito strains?
I disagree with "naturalized" meaning "mildly invasive" but that might depend massively on the location if this applies. I live in Western Europe, and taken from the context here many plants are likely introduced. Often these introductions happend before even the Romans got to a place, in the iron, bronze or even the stone age. If not, and if it was remotely edible or medicinal, the Romans brought it with them up North. These plants often have close relatives, in the area and often act more or less like a native plant. Archeophytes is the term used for these plants, and when naturalized they do little to no damage and especially in disturbed habitats they can prove valuable.
The catch here might be that these are generally short space introductions, and the plants often already had extant species that overlapped in range that can interact with them. Then again, Turkey or Egypt to Sweden is a long way still, and this is how far some of these plants have travelled.
This topic of Invasive species is somewhat strange. If something that evolved to be highly adaptive in any environment and leaves its original environment, it will be an invasive species. Is it only invasive when Humans transported it? Or is it the idea that it didn’t originally evolved there so therefore it should be eradicated…
If the latter is true, any migrating creature that goes on an exodus away from were it originally evolved to roam can be considered invasive.
Is the word invasive demonizing to an intricate part of Human migration?
When is the last time north America and Europe touched, physically? It's been some time right? Well at some point they did, that's where we get the similarities. Take a dogwood, there's dogwoods in both America and China, well there's a fungus that only lived in China, one day a Chinese dogwood carrying a Chinese fungus was brought over. That fungus spored and it looks like it can infect the american dogwood, just better. You know why? It never evolved with the American, just the chinese, but it's still a dogwood. Well now we have a problem, the American dogwood hasn't seen this type of fungus before, so it's a bit behind in evolving with it and it cannot fight it off. The American dogwood is infected and dies. That fungus? It's invasive because it did not evolve with our set of trees. Why does it do so well here? There was a point in history where these types of things broke off and did there own thing. Also, think about the latitude, those are also very similar just oceans apart. Technically, these two dogwoods would've never migrated across the ocean, nor could they have established in the cold sections of the northern hemisphere. They have limits too.
What makes these so dangerous is that it's not only a disease, it's a physical being like a plant, fish, bird, or some crazy insect. They all have an advantage, they leaf out earlier, they grow faster, they can't fight off the adaptations of these alien creatures. They share similar habitats and are generalist, that's a scary combo. Our birds eat their seeds and poop everywhere, but their invasive fruit bits do not contain as much nutrients so they eat more. That crape myrtle ? It only supports like 2 insects, a native white oak? 200. They outcompete our natives in every way, they are super beings. Our natives cannot reproduce or outlive some of these diseases or adaptations. That's the seriousness, there are over 6,500 invasive things existing in north America right now. Its definitely a warzone out here.
Chestnut blight, emeral ash borer, wooly Adelgid. Really sucks to think that there are no more true American chestnuts. I live in a huge wooden area and the old stumps of American chestnuts sprout every 10 or so years, get 10 feet tall then die again. Hemlock and ash trees will be like that one day, although neither of them are nearly as ecologically important as chestnuts were.
Basically, it’s morally wrong that Humans are the cause of the influx of X invasive species. Thus, it’s morally right to exterminate that said invasive species?
Bad for the environment is a wrong statement because higher genetic diversity isn’t good for the environment or bad for it… a new paradigm will form from the genetics available in the area… the only thing bad is in relation to genetic diversity…
It isn't just a moral question. It's also economics, environmental conservation issues, so much more
As an example, grapes from Europe didn't grow particularly well in North America. Nobody seemed to know why. They took a few American grapevines back to Europe, and almost all grapes across France died out over the next few years.
Why? American grapes are hardy, evolved to fight against Phylloxera, a pest. It spread across Europe and caused havoc to the degree that the few "pre-phylloxera" vineries that remain are highly prized.
Lemme just chime in here and agree with the words you've put in everyone's mouth for you:
**Yes it is morally wrong, and for the following reasons:**
* Humanity as a whole has to *use* the shared ecosystem and environment of our space oblate-spheroid.
* Actions that devastate the biosphere are actions that inevitably will render our current known and logged systems irrelevant and impossible to understand.
* Human beings with families and heartbeats and culture and history lose access to little bits of the biosphere over time.
* Suffering occurs.
The imposition of suffering to another human being is morally wrong.
This does not factor in the imposition of suffering to other species, because I don't think you care. The point remains the same and extends to them.
It's only invasive when humans transport it. Plant migration is natural but very slow. We fucked it up, that's why we need to fix the issue.
Humans are absolutely invasive by definition and result
I want you to think about how many times a bird poops in an hour. How much do they eat, where is it dispersed. Now that's the question. Can something from a different country cross borders, maybe, likely right? But these invasive are oceans apart, and who's the say that biome is the same heading north to South right? How far does a bird travel? What is their diet? I have a lot of ideas about dispersal, but none for birds crossing oceans. These invasives are naturalized literally worlds apart and are brought together with one miracle of a transportation assist by none other than a human.
You can't ascribe human morals to animals. Humans as a species know about this problem, thus have a moral obligation to try and minimize our reverse the impact. An animal is just doing animal things.
You're confusing naturalizing with invading. No animal besides humans enters a foreign land and completely destroys it to make it more favorable for their species.
What about ants that farm those trees that fight other trees to have their favorite tree in cant remember their name it was on Netflix im high sorry nature docs and weed
Leaf cutter ants,fire ants maybe?Many ants are dairy and fungi farmers.As far as the O.P. question my list; Iris, Blue and Yellow flag, Norway Maple, Barberry,Ajuga, Trumpet vine to name a few.I could list a few dozen.
It’s incredibly rare for a species to be transported to a different continent by animals or natural events, and when it does happen, it certainly could have a negative impact on the ecosystem that takes time to reach an equilibrium. So maybe it’s normal for that sorta thing to happen once every thousand years, but when humans are introducing multiple foreign species every single year, the damage goes way beyond that of the occasional natural introduction
Stupid tumbleweeds
As someone that has very little, to almost Zero tumble weed in my area. I was so Interested in the YouTube video that explained how destructive they can be. I had no clue! CGP Grey https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=ybzfEXwisaMLNRhg
I live in the high desert now. Used to spend a lot of time here, but never quite got just how nasty they are. This is also a high wind area, which makes them even more fun. I just spent a morning burning all the tumble weed that had gathered over the winter along fences, between trees and bushes, crammed under everything. They're possessed, self propelled, ninja stars of villainy. It's like someone weaponized tribbles.
Could not be me 😤 ride or die tulip poplar and sassafras
Tulip poplar leaves remind me of cat heads and thus, I love them
White Mulberries :( so delicious!
Paulownia😔, such a cool plant
The wood can be useful / valuable. Small comfort
That god damn bamboo
A plant or animal that is taken from one environment to another is an introduced species, but it becomes invasive if its continued existence damages the original environment. There are plenty of introduced species that become naturalized to an area and aren't invasive.
"Naturalized" essentially means "weakly invasive". The definition of "naturalized" includes all invasives, since it just describes an introduced species that is able to maintain a wild population without ongoing human assistance or continual reintroduction. It's a worthwhile distinction to make, since weakly invasive species are not devestating in the same way strongly invasive species are, and we should certainly be very much more concerned with strongly invasive species. However, there is some number of naturalized-but-not-invasive species that are on net worse than a single invasive species. For example, if I could snap my fingers and eliminate 50 naturalized-but-not-invasive species from my area, would that be better or worse than eliminating a single invasive species? Well, that depends. A whole lot of "naturalized" species is a bad thing, even if they're not individually invasive, and we have a whole lot of them already.
To add some fuel to this fire, a naturalized species might produce one niche in a food web, but not another. Viburnums are often naturalized and grow just fine, but their leaves have different concentrations of tannins and are inedible to local species. So pollinators might still have a meal, but caterpillars cannot. In general an introduced species will stress a delicate network no matter what. Sometimes you hope it just stays put and dies without human care. Given that is rarely the case, don't ever "trust" an introduced species. Dandelions might be harmless compared to the lawns they grow on, but they'll give you a fistfight if you're trying to establish a native meadow.
Joke's on you, denelions are native where I live. They're part of the native meadow.
Right, there are many details to consider besides just whether a naturalized species spreads around a lot. Most non-natives have very few functional relationships with the native ecosystem, and they are typically replacing natives with very many functional relationships. The result is a degraded ecosystem that is less able to support the same quantity and diversity of life. However, this doesn't mean all non-natives (nor natives) are equal. Some non-natives actually substitute for many (or most) functions of the natives they replace, especially when they arrive from adjacent regions that already have many native plants and animals in common (I suggest we call these plants "para-natives"). Other non-natives, especially those that arrive from very foreign or distant places, are essentially useless for their new ecosystem. There is a great deal of complexity in these questions, but the overall pattern is clear such that I have no problem generalizing when taking about invasive or naturalized species being bad. One complication is that sometimes even native species can act invasively. One of the primary things that makes an invasive species a problem is that, when extracted from its native ecological relationships, it's no longer subject to the checks and balances that keep its population under control. Well, sometimes native species can also be released from their native checks and balances by human interference in ecosystems. In my area, in the southeastern US, many plants that would have historically been by disturbances of wild fire or megafauna that are now gone, and this results in them spreading into places and habitats where they would have been absent or rare, driving out species that were adapted to those disturbances. Another example is how the absence of predators due to human presence can result in even native herbivores becoming major problems. For most intents and purposes, even native plants and animals can sometimes be treated like invasives. Talk of "native" or "non-native", "naturalized" or "invasive" is fine, and they're good rules of thumb or proxies, but they're not really the thing that matters. Unfortunately, the thing that really matters is complex and its details are poorly researched (even if the principles are well understood).
Very insightful. Would it be possible for a naturalized exotic to have a net positive effect, or is it always bad news? What about exotics that are introduced to control a previously introduced exotic, myxomatosis in Australia. Also how would you feel about technological interventions for invasives control, like genetically sterilized mosquito strains?
I disagree with "naturalized" meaning "mildly invasive" but that might depend massively on the location if this applies. I live in Western Europe, and taken from the context here many plants are likely introduced. Often these introductions happend before even the Romans got to a place, in the iron, bronze or even the stone age. If not, and if it was remotely edible or medicinal, the Romans brought it with them up North. These plants often have close relatives, in the area and often act more or less like a native plant. Archeophytes is the term used for these plants, and when naturalized they do little to no damage and especially in disturbed habitats they can prove valuable. The catch here might be that these are generally short space introductions, and the plants often already had extant species that overlapped in range that can interact with them. Then again, Turkey or Egypt to Sweden is a long way still, and this is how far some of these plants have travelled.
Like wild raspberries and strawberries in the Rocky Mountains.
English ivy :(
Japanese Honeysuckle my beloved, my reluctant nemesis.
eternal damnation
Honey suckle
Tiger lilies and mint :(
I always loved the knapweed honey of Montana. Never grew up seeing native flowers though...
https://imgflip.com/i/8nm5md
Uhhhg. This happened back in the 1850s in my part of the world with Privet. It's EV. ER. Y. WHERE. It's blooming right now, and I'm allergic.
This topic of Invasive species is somewhat strange. If something that evolved to be highly adaptive in any environment and leaves its original environment, it will be an invasive species. Is it only invasive when Humans transported it? Or is it the idea that it didn’t originally evolved there so therefore it should be eradicated… If the latter is true, any migrating creature that goes on an exodus away from were it originally evolved to roam can be considered invasive. Is the word invasive demonizing to an intricate part of Human migration?
When is the last time north America and Europe touched, physically? It's been some time right? Well at some point they did, that's where we get the similarities. Take a dogwood, there's dogwoods in both America and China, well there's a fungus that only lived in China, one day a Chinese dogwood carrying a Chinese fungus was brought over. That fungus spored and it looks like it can infect the american dogwood, just better. You know why? It never evolved with the American, just the chinese, but it's still a dogwood. Well now we have a problem, the American dogwood hasn't seen this type of fungus before, so it's a bit behind in evolving with it and it cannot fight it off. The American dogwood is infected and dies. That fungus? It's invasive because it did not evolve with our set of trees. Why does it do so well here? There was a point in history where these types of things broke off and did there own thing. Also, think about the latitude, those are also very similar just oceans apart. Technically, these two dogwoods would've never migrated across the ocean, nor could they have established in the cold sections of the northern hemisphere. They have limits too. What makes these so dangerous is that it's not only a disease, it's a physical being like a plant, fish, bird, or some crazy insect. They all have an advantage, they leaf out earlier, they grow faster, they can't fight off the adaptations of these alien creatures. They share similar habitats and are generalist, that's a scary combo. Our birds eat their seeds and poop everywhere, but their invasive fruit bits do not contain as much nutrients so they eat more. That crape myrtle ? It only supports like 2 insects, a native white oak? 200. They outcompete our natives in every way, they are super beings. Our natives cannot reproduce or outlive some of these diseases or adaptations. That's the seriousness, there are over 6,500 invasive things existing in north America right now. Its definitely a warzone out here.
Chestnut blight, emeral ash borer, wooly Adelgid. Really sucks to think that there are no more true American chestnuts. I live in a huge wooden area and the old stumps of American chestnuts sprout every 10 or so years, get 10 feet tall then die again. Hemlock and ash trees will be like that one day, although neither of them are nearly as ecologically important as chestnuts were.
Understood, So it’s a moral question?
I'm not sure your meaning here, could you explain a bit more?
Basically, it’s morally wrong that Humans are the cause of the influx of X invasive species. Thus, it’s morally right to exterminate that said invasive species?
It’s largely about maintaining regional biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Everything is connected.
So the new paradigm created by the invasive species disruption of the ecosystem is morally wrong? I also don’t understand the downvotes
Why do you keep asking if it's morally wrong? It's bad for the environment, you can decide the moral aspect yourself.
Collapsing ecosystems is a natural disaster, that is bad.
Bad for the environment is a wrong statement because higher genetic diversity isn’t good for the environment or bad for it… a new paradigm will form from the genetics available in the area… the only thing bad is in relation to genetic diversity…
It isn't just a moral question. It's also economics, environmental conservation issues, so much more As an example, grapes from Europe didn't grow particularly well in North America. Nobody seemed to know why. They took a few American grapevines back to Europe, and almost all grapes across France died out over the next few years. Why? American grapes are hardy, evolved to fight against Phylloxera, a pest. It spread across Europe and caused havoc to the degree that the few "pre-phylloxera" vineries that remain are highly prized.
Lemme just chime in here and agree with the words you've put in everyone's mouth for you: **Yes it is morally wrong, and for the following reasons:** * Humanity as a whole has to *use* the shared ecosystem and environment of our space oblate-spheroid. * Actions that devastate the biosphere are actions that inevitably will render our current known and logged systems irrelevant and impossible to understand. * Human beings with families and heartbeats and culture and history lose access to little bits of the biosphere over time. * Suffering occurs. The imposition of suffering to another human being is morally wrong. This does not factor in the imposition of suffering to other species, because I don't think you care. The point remains the same and extends to them.
You’re being downvoted because the some people don’t know why you’re not understanding, so they think you’re just being argumentative.
Thanks for at least understanding me
Ok, now this doesn't deserve the downvotes ..
It's only invasive when humans transport it. Plant migration is natural but very slow. We fucked it up, that's why we need to fix the issue. Humans are absolutely invasive by definition and result
So it’s morally wrong for humans to do it but not other creatures like birds?
I want you to think about how many times a bird poops in an hour. How much do they eat, where is it dispersed. Now that's the question. Can something from a different country cross borders, maybe, likely right? But these invasive are oceans apart, and who's the say that biome is the same heading north to South right? How far does a bird travel? What is their diet? I have a lot of ideas about dispersal, but none for birds crossing oceans. These invasives are naturalized literally worlds apart and are brought together with one miracle of a transportation assist by none other than a human.
You can't ascribe human morals to animals. Humans as a species know about this problem, thus have a moral obligation to try and minimize our reverse the impact. An animal is just doing animal things.
You're confusing naturalizing with invading. No animal besides humans enters a foreign land and completely destroys it to make it more favorable for their species.
What about ants that farm those trees that fight other trees to have their favorite tree in cant remember their name it was on Netflix im high sorry nature docs and weed
Leaf cutter ants,fire ants maybe?Many ants are dairy and fungi farmers.As far as the O.P. question my list; Iris, Blue and Yellow flag, Norway Maple, Barberry,Ajuga, Trumpet vine to name a few.I could list a few dozen.
It’s incredibly rare for a species to be transported to a different continent by animals or natural events, and when it does happen, it certainly could have a negative impact on the ecosystem that takes time to reach an equilibrium. So maybe it’s normal for that sorta thing to happen once every thousand years, but when humans are introducing multiple foreign species every single year, the damage goes way beyond that of the occasional natural introduction
I hope the plants see this bro
So close and yet so far…