Balance of nature; destruction of (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, April 25, 2016, 01:07 (3134 days ago) @ David Turell

Another example from Australia, where the problem coms from the 1800's when colonists brought to Australia any animal or plant hey wished without any knowledge of how it might upset the balance of nature:-https://www.newscientist.com/article/2085389-vampire-vine-helps-to-destroy-alien-european-weeds-in-australia/-"Cassytha pubescens, or devil's twine, is the first native plant to be investigated as a weapon against invasive weeds introduced to Australia by European settlers in the early 1800s.-"Robert Cirocco of the University of Adelaide says the vine is able to kill all the “major baddies” - gorse, Scotch broom and blackberry - by attaching small suckers to the plants' stems and extracting their water and nutrients. 
 
“'This is important because these weeds cost us millions of dollars annually to eradicate, not to mention their incalculable costs to our native biodiversity,” he says.-"Cirocco and his colleagues showed that devil's twine can destroy gorse by reducing its water and nutrient intake, which in turn harms photosynthesis. “Less photosynthesis translates to less carbohydrate, and less carbohydrate translates to less growth,” says Cirocco-"The gorse plants that the researchers studied were in the Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia, where many had been naturally infected with C. pubescens in the area. “You could see a Cassytha infection front that was leaving dead gorse in its wake,” says Cirocco.-"As a result, there is little danger that the vine will itself become a menace, as with the cane toads introduced to Australia in 1935 to control beetles that devastated sugar-cane crops.-"C. pubescens also fulfils the brief of being far more toxic to non-native than native plants.-“'Cassytha is not the smartest thing - it will pretty much go for anything it can get its suckers on, including barbed wire,” says Cirocco. “But research shows that Cassytha has a much greater effect on invasive weeds, perhaps because native plants have co-evolved with it, so they have likely developed mechanisms of resistance or tolerance.'”-Comment: This discussion points out that Australia is still fighting the mistakes made by its colonists, learning about the balance of nature the hard way.