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Virtual hitchhikers
Natural History, June, 2007 by Nick Atkinson
You can get just about anything online, from a stuffed moose to an acre of the moon. So it goes without saying that seemingly harmless plants can also be added to your e-shopping cart. Online retailers sell them, of course, and enthusiastic gardeners in chat rooms trade the seeds of their favorite blooms.
But all that e-trade could present a growing threat--literally--to biodiversity, according to Yorick Reyjol, an ecologist at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivieres in Canada. Reyjol warns that enabling plants to travel across the planet so freely risks introducing invasive, exotic species to vulnerable ecosystems. Many invasive plants started their destructive journeys as commercial offerings that were subsequently exchanged among gardeners. (Water hyacinth, a South American plant with attractive purple flowers, is a classic example: it now clogs waterways and chokes out native vegetation across a swath of the United States and in many other nations.) internet exchanges simply streamline the invasion.
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Webmasters can help by warning about the dangers of trading exotic species, and by pointing out the various regulations governing the movement of biological material. Without greater precautions, the liberties of the virtual world could easily take their toll on the much more precious real one. (Biodiversity and Conservation)
COPYRIGHT 2007 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
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Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »