Man-made rainforest baffles scientists

[grinner]

Man-made rainforest baffles scientists
By Charles Arthur Technology Editor

16 September 2004

A Man-Made rainforest that should have taken millennia to evolve has baffled scientists by springing up in just 150 years.

Rainforests should take millions of years to develop the highly complex, interactive ecosystems for which they are famed, in which every species fills an essential niche.

But the forest on Green Mountain, Ascension Island, in the mid-Atlantic sprung up chaotically from a mixed bag of botanical scrap brought in by the Royal Navy in 1843.

And the introduced species have thrived at a rate that has stunned experts and could trigger a rethink of conventional ecological theory, New Scientist magazine reports today.

When Charles Darwin stopped off at Ascension Island in 1836 on the home stretch of his long journey on the Beagle, he described it then as "entirely destitute of trees". Lying 1,200 miles from the nearest continent, the volcanic island was almost barren because of its remoteness, with only about 20 plant species, mainly ferns.

But in 1843, an ambitious British scheme for revitalising the island began, with Royal Navy troops planting thousands of trees a year, using seedlings from Argentina, South Africa, and the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.

Soon the bare white mountain was cloaked in vegetation and renamed Green Mountain. By the early 20th century the mountain's slopes were covered in guava, banana, wild ginger, the white-flowered Cleroden drum, Madagascan periwinkle and eucalyptus from Australia. A thick bamboo forest crowned the summit.

Now Green Mountain is a thriving tropical forest, yet it grew from species collected randomly. Conventional theory suggests complex ecosystems only emerge through a slow evolution in which different organisms develop in tandem to fill particular niches.

But Green Mountain suggests that natural rainforests may be constructed more by chance than by evolution.

Dissident theorists call this "ecological fitting". It says species do not so much evolve to create ecosystems as make the best of what they have.

"The Green Mountain system is a spectacular example of ecological fitting," David Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University, told New Scientist. "It is a man-made system that has produced a tropical rainforest without any co-evolution between its constituent species."

But Alan Gray, an ecologist at the University of Edinburgh, argues that the few surviving endemic species on Green Mountain would still be co-evolving and may form the framework of the new ecosystem, meaning the newcomers may be structurally irrelevant.

Even the new species may not be such a random collection.

"Many of the imports may have come from the same place, importing their co-evolutionary relationships," said Gray. link (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=562208)

[scrape_medic]

Which goes to prove that we (humans) are not as smart as we think we are......nature has got us beat hands down. Nice find grinner.

[who45]

This week I've been teaching my class about the tropical rainforest. I think this would be over their heads though considering they are only 4 :lol....good article.

[AgentSun]

great article, and great proof that we really aren't as advanced as we thought... who knows? this could provide a great new method of reviving the rainforests.

[Third EYe]

"natural rainforests may be constructed more by chance than by evolution."


evolution = chance

[scrape_medic]

OED

Chance n., a., & v. 1. n. Way things happen, fortune, absence of design or discoverabl cause, course of events regarded as a power, fate, (by ~, as it happens or happened without design........2. a. Fortuitous, accidental

Evolution n. Evolving; origination of species by development from earlier forms; developement (of organism, human society, universe, etc.)

I think evolution kinda implies trial and error whereas chance implies "oh today I woke as a blue flower" ....."oh look I am extinct" *puff!*

[Third EYe]

evolution = chance

explain the begining without chance, since you so kindly incluced "universe" in your definition of evolution.

[scrape_medic]

heck if I could explain the beginings of the universe, do you think I would be doing the job I am....heck no......:lol anyrate the definition is "development of" not "begining of" so whilst the begining might have been chance the developement of the universe, we assume, is under some great plan of physical laws, though what they are, I am not even going to begin to say that I understand. However a mass of particles may evolve into a planet or an astronomical body given the right forces acting upon them, gravitational pull of other particles, influence of nearby bodies, blah blah.......but are the right circumstancesa for this to happen "chance"? Probably not...the most prevelent element in the universe appears to be hydrogen, and that happily bonds with most things in one form or another.

I think too that the ecological scientific priciples may account or the use of the term Chance here...all scientific laws must be testable and reproducible.....as this "experiment" has never been reproduced so far, it is still techincally only a chance occurence.

[eta_carinae]

Ok, I tried to post this eariler, but every now and then when I open the smiley window, everything crashes. So no smileys in this post that I can't type by hand :)

Now Green Mountain is a thriving tropical forest, yet it grew from species collected randomly.

In environmental engineering we would call this the "shotgun approach." It's actually very similar to what is done today when resotring/reclaiming debilitated ecosystems. It's a form of self-design - you put in a whole bunch of things you think may survive, selected for a number of reasons (ability to survive in a similar ecosystem, non-invasive, native species, etc) and then you let nature decide how the ultimate ecosystem will look. It actually works much better than a system that is engineered down to the small details. Becuase when it comes down to it, although we may have a lot of information on how individual species or processes work and iteract, we really don't know how these things work as a system.

[talyn3]

Maybe we're smarter than we think. What if we think were collecting species at random, when in fact we are actually selecting plants with sub-consious intent. We collect plants that will fill niches of other plants outside of their normal ecosystem, plants that combined to equal a normal rainforest. The process was so complex we couldn't register it with our simple reasoning. Maybe we're all just that good ;)

[grinner]

This reminds me of Asimov's 'Foundation and Earth' novel. How planets were 'lost' after their initial development and how the introduced species adapted to the new environment... in interesting ways.

[Darth Buddha]

And I thought this would be worth taking you off my ignore list for.

This is not a scholarly journal, nor a scholarly article.

In fact, it is highly suspect as serving those who wish to debate serious ecological issues.

I would suggest that nobody take this article seriously for 'scientific content'. Alas, grinner's choice of article has far more to do with his political science than any respectable study.

Back on my ignore list, where you belong.

[grinner]

wtf Buddha?

The Independent isn't a serious News outlet? What occured on this island isn't important?

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/biedwilk/pdfs/greenmt.pdf

[Darth Buddha]

Neither scholarly nor scientific. Nor even a study... an "editorial"?

I don't care to give you a "reading of scientific articles 101", but the very title of the Journal relative to the topic should be a dead giveaway. It is, in the first, a poor fit (always the sign of something that coulnd't get published in the main stream). In the second, it is a rearward string journal.

But, unfortunately, there are always these marginal publications that manage to publish nonsense like "love is nothing more than an addiction to your lover's spit" and other such nonsense for infomercials and political hacks to quote.

If, however, you go in for that sort of thing, I think I could find some blue-blocker glasses and a q-ray bracelet to sell ya, cheap.

[grinner]

I posted it because, if true, it is an interesting possiblity. This idea has been used in many Science Fiction books... of planets that were terraformed and then 'lost'. If it is true that a rainforest developed on this island in a short period of time... it is possible that the rainforests that are in the tropical environs could be saved if humans stopped cutting them down. That the surviving area would be able to re-establish itself in a few 100's of years. That is probably as close to environmental as I will get.

Besides, I have looked for 'Scientific' articles that attempt to explain it, and they are few and far between in the interweb.

[talyn3]

Can't we all just get along??

[eta_carinae]

I just looked at is as an interesting topic. I mean, it's obvious it's not a scientific study, I don't know why anyone would think it was. Looks more like something you'd read in the newspaper. And besides, just because something isn't in a scientific journal doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to be read and debated. Plenty of things don't make it into journals like Science based on such non-scientific things as politics. I'm not trying to flame anybody, I just wanted to point out that I never viewed it as a peer-reviewed study.

[Darth Buddha]

The political slant is as obvious as the lack of science. Whether this arises from only grazing in areas that confirm one's cherished self delusions or from deliberate subterfuge really doesn't matter much.

On a more general level, I feel very bad that pieces like this get into newspapers and the lay press sans even a cursory critique. Whether the article is right slanted (as this is) or left slanted (say, even books like "Earth in the Balance") doesn't matter. The disservice to the public is enormous, because garbage like this undermines confidence in the scientific process.

But scientists generally don't buy quackery that is appealling for infotainment purposes. So all it amounts to is a perverse form of disinformation.

[grinner]

post a "scientific" article about this then.

[who45]

And I thought this would be worth taking you off my ignore list for.

This is not a scholarly journal, nor a scholarly article.

In fact, it is highly suspect as serving those who wish to debate serious ecological issues.

I would suggest that nobody take this article seriously for 'scientific content'. Alas, grinner's choice of article has far more to do with his political science than any respectable study.

Back on my ignore list, where you belong. Well I found it interesting...seriously DB you need chill out.

[waltersgirl]

admin comment: Budda, knock it off. and may i suggest a re-read of the TOS for this forum.

[talyn3]

Now let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya.

Anyone?

[AgentSun]

okay, but i'm sick so i might be off key.

kumbaya...

[Afarscapefan]

You don't want to hear me sing.

I can't wait until they turn this tree island stuff into reality TV

"Plant Survivor"

After 100 years now only 7 plant species dominate the scene.

My eyeball's will be riveted to the TV screen watching the leaves grow on that one.

I think the army of marching banana trees would be the most popular, once bamboo takes a hold its very difficult to remove, but I'll place my bet on the eucalyptus trees. They are hot - the Scarrens of the plant kingdom - sneaky trees that suddenly burst into flame, play dead and then sprout back to life.

Spoilers - there will be an episode where it discovered that the Madagascan periwinkle is actually a shellfish and gets banned from the island after a protest from the other teams. And another one where there is a court case when the white flowered Cleroden drum is accused of disturbing the peace.