Sunday, January 13, 2008

Weekend Blog Blogging

The past few weeks in invasive species-related posts, from around the blogosphere:

  • Paul at The force that through... posts about a Brazilian pepper bush (Schinus terebinthifolius) he found at Disney World.
  • A Snail's Eye View has an interesting post about the invasive white snail (Theba pisana) threatening agricultural crops in Australia.
  • Speaking of snails (who knew there were so many snail-related blogs?), A Snail's Tale posts about some interspecific competition between cats and rats on an island off the coast of New Zealand.
  • Butterflies of Singapore has some excellent photos of a lovely painted lady (Vanessa cardui). While the species has ac osmopolitan distribution (thanks chelydra), BoS questions whether the discovered specimens were bred and released, or perhaps escapees.
  • Politician Glyn Davies has a View from Rural Wales, and that view is filled with invasive American grey squirrels.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) is also sometimes called the Cosmopolitan because it is native to every continent except Antarctica. This species also migrates long distances, so even if it doesn't normally breed in Singapore it can hardly be considered invasive. Regardless, this species is definitely not native only to America.

Jennifer Forman Orth said...

Sorry, did not mean to confuse anyone by suggesting it was invasive. I was merely linking to a post that notes the specimen could have been bred and released, or be an escape.

A Google search confirms this species appears to be quite cosmopolitan. I will update the post above.

AYDIN Ă–RSTAN said...

Incidentally, the invasive snail Theba pisana is in Portland, Australia not Portland, Oregon. Heh, heh.

Jennifer Forman Orth said...

I would like to say that's the first time I've made that mistake, but...

In my defense, but weakly, I did recently post about a similar phenomenon with Cernuella virgata in Washington state and coupled with the fact that the USA is the center of the universe (ha ha), made the false assumption.

It is nice to get so many comments, I should make misleading statements more often ;-).