On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Liviu Andronic <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 6:58 PM, Steve Litt <[email protected]> wrote: >> By the way, I LOVE the whole concept of invasive species. Living in >> Florida, USA, I see a world teeming with life, with plants growing on >> plants growing on other plants. I don't know if they're foreign, but >> we have these "air potato" vines that climb trees from the ground all >> the way to the top. We have Spanish Moss hanging from every tree, and >> little mini-vines that completely cover our decorative plants and >> would steal all their light if I didn't rip them off. And then of >> course we have the fire ant >> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant) that came here >> from Brazil in the 1930's, liked it here, and made it their home. >> Don't try laying on the grass in Florida. >> > This is completely off-topic, but to bite the bait, you may be > interested in another subspecies of ant: the Argentine ant. [1] They > like to travel as much as the RIFA, and you'll find a recent The > Economist article on the subject [2]. (You may also want to read a > much older article on fire ants invasions. [3])
Oh yes - very bad invader, worldwide distribution by now (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-burg/invasion_bio/inv_spp_summ/Linepithema_humile.html - even in france (not your fault - I guess it was before your time (1905)), huge impacts - we had them in SA coming out of our power sockets........ They have a huge impact in systems, where local ants play an important role in dispersal of seeds, as they can outcompete the local ants, and then nobody is dispersing the seeds of the plants. In South Africa, especially around Cape Town (in the Fynbos), many plants depend on ants for dispersal. It is really great to hear that so many people are aware of these problems. We left South Africa about two years ago (I am now sitting in Paris / France), and my awareness definitely comes from my nearly 15 years there. We lived in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, and I was doing my PostDoc at the Centre for Invasion biology (http://academic.sun.ac.za/cib/). \But what gave me the incentive to work on aliens, was that one can really see, without knowing to much about botany and ecology, the impact of aliens in that area: you have areas literally covered in invasive trees, one of them is an Acacia species - it flowers very nicely, but nothing else grows underneath, and after seed production, the ground is covered with seeds, which are dispersed by birds and water. Then these aliens do change fire regimes: see for example the fires in Cape town (I think around 2000) and the huge fires in Yellowstone (the one in the US). Then there is water. In response to the impact of aliens on water, Working For Water was started (http://www.dwa.gov.za/wfw/), a really successful program which combines social uplifting with alien clearing and a huge benefit for water production (alien trees in water catchment consume and evaporate much more water then local vegetation => clearing alien trees results in more water available - a very important aspect in a dry country like South Africa!). And the awareness of these impacts are really needed. Cheers, Rainer > > I've had a first-hand experience with the beast while in Argentina > this summer, and they're a pretty pesky lot. At the very least they > don't bite, but they don't let you do much around the house or the > kitchen. Beware of opening (and sometimes buying a non-hermetically > sealed) a box a cereals: the pests will sense it, and 30min later they > will be in their hundreds collecting their prey. Like to drink a glass > of Coke? Fine, but don't even think of leaving the half-finished glass > somewhere in the room or you'll be in for a nasty surprise. Bottom > line, these beasts can easily spice up your stay in Argentina, and I > sure do hope I didn't bring a sample back with me in France. > > Regards > Liviu > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant > [2] http://www.economist.com/node/21540980 > [3] http://www.economist.com/node/302195 -- Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany) Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology Stellenbosch University South Africa Tel : +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44 Cell: +33 - (0)6 85 62 59 98 Fax (F): +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44 Fax (D): +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44 email: [email protected] Skype: RMkrug
