| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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Life on the Edge Beating Back the Blobs It was my first week in college, in a big, strange city. I had an afternoon with no assignments. Wandering through the unfamiliar streets, I stumbled on an obscure theater showing a double feature. The first movie was eminently forgettable, but the second, “The Blob,” has stayed with me for 40 years—perhaps because the ooze first entered the ventilation ducts and took over the local cinema before starting on the rest of the town. The Blob was a true alien, coming to Earth on an extraterrestrial projectile, but there are many equally sinister Blobs already amongst us. The photographs on pages 18-21 show all too clearly what the insidious alga Caulerpa taxifolia has done since it was brought from its native tropics to an alien environment. Up until an aquarium tossed some of their excess algae into the Mediterranean, the seaweed was just an innocuous aquarium decoration, pretty and easy to grow. Just how easy we now know. While in its natural habitat, it behaves well, reproducing sexually and satisfied to exist in harmony with other plants. But the aquarium mutant spreads with runner-like stolons, which can grow several inches a day. Microscopic pieces that break off in the surge can begin another colony down the coast. In the 15 years since it was first discovered, this single clone has suffocated thousands of acres along the shores of France, Spain, Italy, and Croatia. Two years ago it showed up in a Southern California lagoon. In “Alien Alga,” Jay Withgott describes the untiring efforts of a group of California scientists to beat back this spreading plague. So far the precautions are working, but there will never be a time when the battle can be said to be won. A more definitive outcome looks much more likely on the Channel Islands, where a few subspecies of gray fox are teetering on the brink of extinction. They fell victim to unanticipated consequences. Pigs let loose on the island attracted fox-eating eagles, and ddt dumping nearby caused the local bald eagles to go extinct. Erika Kelly covers the efforts to resuscitate the ecosystem in “Fix it for the Foxes.” In the parks and open spaces of San Francisco, when it comes to plants, “natives” and “nonnatives” are fighting words. There’s little love lost for most local invasives, with the exception of trees like cypress and eucalyptus. People like to see trees, and there are few native species that grow unaided within a few miles of the coast. Otherwise the opposition to native planting comes mainly from dog owners, who don’t like to see their favorite runs cordoned off while native plants and birds put down roots. But there is a strong movement here to restore the natural ecosystem. In “Life After Iceplant,” Christine Colasurdo details the work of the army of volunteers who are working to make that happen. You only need visit the Presidio’s revitalized Crissy Field to see the remarkable fruits of their labor. Also in these pages is another chapter in the saga of ant man Brian Fisher, who has once again found himself in the middle of a minor revolution, this time in Madagascar. In “For the Love of Ants,” he explains how he sweet-talked himself, his companions, and his precious specimens around nerve-wracking blockades. Fisher also appears elsewhere in this issue, writing in response to a letter from a reader uncomfortable with the idea that collecting specimens can be paired with conservation. By any measure, collecting pales beside the real threats to species extinction—habitat destruction in all its forms, those accursed invasives, and global warming. Many smaller species have still to be identified, analyzed, and understood. The knowledge that comes with collecting greatly outweighs the loss of those few individuals whose lives must be surrendered so that their fellows have a better chance to survive. Keith K. Howell is Editor of California Wild |