Reintroduction Of CP into the wild, Part II

From: Paul V. McCullough (pvmcull@voicenet.com)
Date: Fri Jul 11 1997 - 09:46:38 PDT


Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 12:46:38 -0400
From: "Paul V. McCullough" <pvmcull@voicenet.com>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg2617$foo@default>
Subject: Reintroduction Of CP into the wild, Part II


    Interesting posts... my replies:

TO: David Mellard:
    Cool info. See my comments in the email to you.

TO: Sean Barry:
    Okay, I read your comments- and you have good points regarding
introduction of new CP into a "pristine" environment. But no convincing
evidence against introducing already established CP into the fold (ie.
D. rotundifolia where rotundifolia are already present...) is given.
Also, I would NEVER introduce a plant from another continent (Capensis
from Africa) into my local bogs... I was speaking of Capillaris.
    Now, you go on to say that you can't see why I think it's "unlikely"
for say d. capillaris to over-run and exterminate say, d. rotundifolia
(I don't think we're thinking of sundews killing off sarracenia
purpurea, right? Has anyone seen this?) or d. intermedia. Well, I base
my theory on the fact that I have a rotundifolia growing right next to a
cluster of capillaris. I have an intermedia growing from the base of a
VFT. My observations don't show any evidence that these CP would
over-run each other. I haven't observed poisons being released by one
type of these CP (rotundifolias, capillaris, intermedia, s. purpurea,
VFT) to kill off adjacent plantings. My observations show that the
growth rates are pretty similar in the three drosera families I'm
talking about. In the local bogs, rotundifolia traps were intermixed
with intermedia traps. Capillaris shares some features of intermedia
and rotundifolia... it seems reasonable that they all share a common
past. Still, I'd probably hold off on introducing capillaris right
away. I still want to pin down where these grow naturally.
    I didn't know Heliamphora was tasty... (Sorry, Barry... I couldn't
resist.) Still your comments are well rec'vd (and loudly, too.) and I
appreciate your position on this. Again, I reiterate that I haven't
done a thing in this direction, as yet. (Even if the state is attempting
to introduce VFTs into bogs somewhere here; I'm sure this is on the
advice of "eminent community ecologists, zoogeographers(?), botanists,
systematists" as you put it... NJ officials would never go about this on
their own... they're too busy making sure auto insurance rates are too
high!)

    Also as I tried to point out in my initial posting, if people in the
CP community are planting artificial bogs in their backyards, there's
already an increase in the chances of "cross-contamination" of local
bogs (a slim chance, to be sure) via seed transportation. From
"Jurassic Park" and "Lost World": "Life will find a way...". It would
be interesting to look into this possibility. (btw- I don't think that
the supposed animal disasters sited in private emails to me really apply
to plants- this is going off on a tangent, IMHO. I think introducing
animals not indigenous to an area is FAR more dangerous then CP
reinvesting would be: "Say, let's put a rhino on the Atlantic City
beach!" Not the same argument at all.)

Cheers,
Paul

--
Paul V. McCullough
"3D Animation World" http://www.voicenet.com/~pvmcull
"CP Page" http://www.voicenet.com/~pvmcull/pics/cp/carniv.htm



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