We have this thing about wanting a stable environment. Makes us feel secure knowing that there are checks and balances and that nothing is running amok, nothing is sweeping through the world like some unchecked plague. We like that sense of control even when we aren’t the agents of control. A world in equilibrium frees us from worrying about potentially inimical excesses. And, to use the old expression, Lord knows, we certainly have many of those.
Invasive species have been a problem since life evolved. Some happy group of organisms sits in place, using its environment to its advantage, balanced between too much and too little: Just the right balance between resources and their use. And then, bang! Along comes some invader to eat the stuff that supports the endemic population or to attack that population. “Bummer.” Bet that’s what the Neanderthals thought when humans invaded Europe.
So, we find ourselves trying to rebalance Nature gone out of kilter, to put things back the way they once were and the way we preferred them. But disequilibrium is the way the world changes, the pendulum of any environment, social, biological, physical, swinging between extremes and rarely dead downward and motionless. Too many herbivores? Add some wolves, or lions, or hyenas. And what about those pests so many of us try to avoid. The insects. Geez, they’re everywhere, aren’t they? Underfoot and overhead. In areas where we keep food. Invading our gardens and farms. Sometimes carrying diseases like Lyme or West Nile.
Enter the stinkbugs. Really, enter almost everywhere. In southwestern Pennsylvania, for example, they start looking for residence in homes in August and appear unannounced inside during the winter. “Oh! No. There’s another one. I’ll get it.” And the critters damage fruit, apples and peaches. What’s a human society to do? Science. I know. We’ll try science. We can get things under control because we’re intelligent. We can reset the equilibrium. Balance things through purposeful biocontrol.
Of course, we have to be careful. The cure, as we all know, can be worse than the disease. There are many instances of human intervention in Nature that resulted in disastrous consequences for endemic organisms that weren’t the object of biocontrol efforts. So, there are government officials who oversee any purposefully introduced biocontrol agent, and one of those is the samurai wasp, an agent that can destroy stinkbugs by laying its eggs inside stinkbug eggs. But bugs have never obeyed the dictates of bureaucracies nor the boundaries of countries. Trying to make a careful effort to study whether or not the samurai wasps could be imported to kill stinkbugs, entomologist Kim Hoelmer at the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Newark, brought the wasps to the USA.* And then, to his surprise, found that the wasps had arrived on their own, invaded, so to speak. There appears to be an Equilibrium Principle at work: Stinkbugs invade. Stinkbugs harm fruit. Wasps invade somehow on their own. Wasps begin to cull stinkbug population. Hmm.
True, the new equilibrium that wasps might establish will be different from the old equilibrium that persisted before the stinkbugs invaded. Nature adjusts. We will adjust. The pendulum will hang vertically for a brief time. But no place remains the same, and the very act of preservation results in some change.
*Servick, Kelly. Scientists spent years on a plan to import this wasp to kill stinkbugs. Then it showed up on its own. Science . August 9, 2018, Online at http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/scientists-spent-years-plan-import-wasp-kill-stinkbugs-then-it-showed-its-own
Invasive species have been a problem since life evolved. Some happy group of organisms sits in place, using its environment to its advantage, balanced between too much and too little: Just the right balance between resources and their use. And then, bang! Along comes some invader to eat the stuff that supports the endemic population or to attack that population. “Bummer.” Bet that’s what the Neanderthals thought when humans invaded Europe.
So, we find ourselves trying to rebalance Nature gone out of kilter, to put things back the way they once were and the way we preferred them. But disequilibrium is the way the world changes, the pendulum of any environment, social, biological, physical, swinging between extremes and rarely dead downward and motionless. Too many herbivores? Add some wolves, or lions, or hyenas. And what about those pests so many of us try to avoid. The insects. Geez, they’re everywhere, aren’t they? Underfoot and overhead. In areas where we keep food. Invading our gardens and farms. Sometimes carrying diseases like Lyme or West Nile.
Enter the stinkbugs. Really, enter almost everywhere. In southwestern Pennsylvania, for example, they start looking for residence in homes in August and appear unannounced inside during the winter. “Oh! No. There’s another one. I’ll get it.” And the critters damage fruit, apples and peaches. What’s a human society to do? Science. I know. We’ll try science. We can get things under control because we’re intelligent. We can reset the equilibrium. Balance things through purposeful biocontrol.
Of course, we have to be careful. The cure, as we all know, can be worse than the disease. There are many instances of human intervention in Nature that resulted in disastrous consequences for endemic organisms that weren’t the object of biocontrol efforts. So, there are government officials who oversee any purposefully introduced biocontrol agent, and one of those is the samurai wasp, an agent that can destroy stinkbugs by laying its eggs inside stinkbug eggs. But bugs have never obeyed the dictates of bureaucracies nor the boundaries of countries. Trying to make a careful effort to study whether or not the samurai wasps could be imported to kill stinkbugs, entomologist Kim Hoelmer at the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Newark, brought the wasps to the USA.* And then, to his surprise, found that the wasps had arrived on their own, invaded, so to speak. There appears to be an Equilibrium Principle at work: Stinkbugs invade. Stinkbugs harm fruit. Wasps invade somehow on their own. Wasps begin to cull stinkbug population. Hmm.
True, the new equilibrium that wasps might establish will be different from the old equilibrium that persisted before the stinkbugs invaded. Nature adjusts. We will adjust. The pendulum will hang vertically for a brief time. But no place remains the same, and the very act of preservation results in some change.
*Servick, Kelly. Scientists spent years on a plan to import this wasp to kill stinkbugs. Then it showed up on its own. Science . August 9, 2018, Online at http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/scientists-spent-years-plan-import-wasp-kill-stinkbugs-then-it-showed-its-own
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