Posted by mike on October 13, 2000 at 16:42:37:
In Reply to: Exactly! posted by Eins on October 13, 2000 at 13:55:41:
yeah, the classic case study on this one is the Brown tree snake on Guam and the Mongooses that were brought in to control it. Biocontrol is a double edged sword, and ecosystems are such complex and unpredictable things, that it can be very difficult to predict how a newly introduced organism will behave in a new area, regardless of whether or not its food item is in that new are aor not. There are probably lots of things in the indopacific that eat Caulerpa, but those organisms would likely have a poor tolerance of our cooler temperatures. If any gastropods are among those critters that eat Caulerpa, we would have to ascertain that they wouldn't also munch on our local kelps, Sargassum, Eisenia or other species. In addition, we would want to make sure that such an introduced snail wouldn't bring with it, some exotic parasites (snails are notorious for those) that would afflict our local Norriseas or spanish shawls or others. Indopacific systems (hell, carbon based machinery in general) are so diverse complex and so little understood, they make the laptop computer on which i'm typing this look like a simple contraption by comparison!