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This reminds me of the Zebra Mussels in Lake Erie. In the 80s and 90s, invasive Zebra Mussels got into Lake Erie, and started spreading quickly. They would cover the surfaces of everything. They were afraid that they would eventually clog up the water inlet that supply drinking water to the region.
There was a near panic among government leaders for several years, as the mussels grew out of control, and no solution could be found. They even announced a contest with a significant reward if anyone could come up with a solution, but nobody could. So the problem increased.
Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, so pollution and organic matter tends to concentrate there, making it very murky, and impossible to see. But the stuff in the water was food to the Zebra Mussels, and the population kept filtering the water, feeding.
Eventually, the population reached a level that the water was clearing up, allowing the sun to penetrate deeper into the water. It turns out that Zebra Mussels don’t like the sun, and between that, and the decreasing amount of food in the water, their breeding slowed significantly. Now they seemed to have reached a good balance. They aren’t going away, but they aren’t the existential threat that they once were either.
The best news is that since the water is much clearer now, it has caused an increase in scuba diving. Being the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Erie has also known over the centuries as a bad lake to be on in a storm, and there are many shipwrecks on the bottom. They were hard to dive on in the old, dirty water days, but today those wrecks are visible, and attracting diving tourists.
So all they had to do was nothing, and the Zebra Mussels problem fixed itself, and caused a new business segment to boom.
Kind of reminds me of the daisyworld simulation.
It’s been a long time since I read about it, so I may possibly miss some details.
Daisyworld simulates a planet entirely covered by 2 species of daisy- black ones and white ones.
The black ones are better able to absorb the suns rays, so initially outcompete the white ones, however because they’re absorbing more of the rays, that leads to the planet warming up.
At a certain point the planets temperature gets too warm and the black daisies start dying off. Since the white daisies are better able to reflect the sun’s rays, they’re less effected by the increased temperature and start to outcompete the black ones.
After a while the white daisies are dominant, and since most of the planet is now reflecting the sun’s rays the temperature starts to drop, until it gets to a point where it’s too cold for the white daisies but since the black daisies can absorb more of the sun they start to outcompete the black ones again
Lather, rinse, repeat until they reach a sort of equilibrium.
That explains why simEatth had so many daisies
That explains why I remember hearing about the dreaded zebra mussels for so long and then nothing for quite some time. Thanks for the info!
Nature always adapts. Humans on the other hand…
Never seen this before. It’s very similar to the thoughts and pictures in my head before I made that comment
I knew what this was going to be before I clicked it. Great comic.
Snail kite bird kabobs my friend
Are you guys really that stupid? Nature, ah, finds a way. It’s called evolution.
Evolutionary adaptation doesn’t happen that fast, and the name of the bird is literally a snail kite lmao.
Guess what they eat?
Old snail kite: I hate foreign food
Young snail kite: Get wrecked boomer, these apple shits are lit.
Old snail kite: Dies of starvation.
Young snail kite: fucks.
And so the cycle continues.
Evolution is just the change in allele frequency of a population over generations. This includes 90% of the population dying before they figure out new food.
Learned behavior is rarely expressed in genetics.
I wonder which came first, the invasive snails that look about the same as the other snails they were eating or the population decline of kites?
The fittest in this case would be the kites that could survive the lean times before the new snails had time to spread, which could mean quite a lot of things but probably isn’t related to them being picky about what snails they were eating as they starved to death.
This isn’t learned behaviour though. The kites tried eating the invasive snails immediately, but they were too large to be cracked by their beaks, being two to five times larger.
The change to eating the larger non-native snails was facilitated by larger beaks seen in the years after the invasion.
It seems like the local applesnail had a crash due to drought in the early 2000’s (partly caused by the draining of wetlands for development), and the invasive island applesnail was first seen in 2004. There are even more species of invasive snail now, but the opportunity likely arose because of a population crash.
The fittest in this case are the kits that can eat the snails they find, not by being less picky, but by having larger beaks.
Kites?
Fruit?
Life uh finds a way
In some ways the kid’s poem about an old lady who swallowed a fly/spider/bird/etc is a good image of our attempts at controlling invasive species. Eventually, nature will figure it out without our help.
Florida
manBird
