Originally published November 15 2005
Invasive species may expand their range because of climate change
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Molecular Ecology has published a study that suggests invasive species may expand their habitat ranges with changes in climate, like the current global warming trend.
In the United States alone, the economic cost of invasive species -- in terms of the damage they do and the expense of controlling them -- is estimated at $137 billion a year, according to a study by Cornell University in 1999.
Introduced tilapia and Nile Perch have devastated endemic fish populations throughout Africa, while the snakehead, a carnivorous fish capable of walking across land, has raised fears every time it appears in a pond in the Eastern United States.
Cane Toads in Australia - Wreaking Havoc Down Under Everyone in Australia is in agreement that the cane toads have got to go.
Luiz Rocha leads geneticists who time travel through ocean environments.
"We found that global warming events correspond clearly with major range expansions of gobies from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic Ocean and subsequently into the Eastern Atlantic," summarizes Rocha.
A chilly Antarctic current--the Benguela upwelling system-- surges up along the western coast of Africa acting as a natural barrier, and has prevented most warm water organisms from the Indian Ocean from making it in to the Atlantic for the last 2 million years.
Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Hofstra University and the University of Hawaii, sequenced goby DNA (774 pb of the mtDNA of cytochrome b, to be exact) from the western, central and eastern Atlantic Ocean.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), a unit of the Smithsonian Institution, with headquarters in Panama City, Panama, was established to further our understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, to train students to conduct research in the tropics and to promote conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems.
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