What drives “species come to be” is what drives all life/organisms to come to be, i.e. a proven successful route, circumstantially evolved culture, that enhanced the RNAs’ constrained energy by the culturally enhanced RNAs’ proliferation, followed with accordingly alternatively spliced expression.

This is evolution, i.e. enhanced constrained energy to delay-postpone the universal conversion of mass-formats to energy, to the energy that keeps fueling the expansion of the universe. This expansion will be overcome by gravity upon depletion of the universe’s massfuel, and will be followed by empansion for accelerating reverting of energy to mass all the way back to singularity. The universe is an allmass allenergy poles affair.

Dov Henis
(comments from 22nd century)

PS:
- It’s culture that modifies genetics, that changes gene’s expression. NOT vice versa.
- Epigenetics YOK. Alternative splicing is epiDNAtic, not epigenetic.
- ALL life is RNAs evolution products. RNAs are Earth’s prime organism.

DH

The most valid point I see here is that non native does not necessarily equal invasive. The vast majority of introduced species do not become invasive… and some native species DO, especially when people change the conditions in an ecosystem. I think it is a good idea to get away from using ‘non-native’ as a qualifier, and instead look at species based on how they act in an ecosystem.

But… I fear most will read this article as an advocation of not managing invasive species. I see this as being harmful to conservation in the long run. While methods of management (ie: whether or not to use herbicide) are valid subjects of debate, there is a vast body of good science that indicates that invasive species lead to dramatic loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function. While ethically labeling loss of ecosystem function as ‘bad’ may be difficult for some to swallow, it is in our best interest to manage for diverse and stable ecosystems when we can, and to do damage control if we can’t. The phenomena of invasiveness in ecosystems is poorly understood, and hopefully future science will give us a better idea for how this works. In the meanwhile, we can only do what we can to reduce the harm we do while we try to we understand the implications of it.

Also, there is a pretty solid element of hypocrisy here to condemn ‘ethical labeling’ of species and then call tamarisk a ‘boom’. It’s an odd statement to make anyway, since the plant seems to have more negative impacts to ecosystems and humans than positive ones (though it is a valid point that it may be proliferating mainly due to alterations of the natural hydrological regime via dams, etc). In any event, some species will certainly benefit from the spread of tamarisk. For that matter, coyotes and raccoons benefit from suburbanization, and many heat-tolerant species may benefit from climate change. I’m still quite OK with saying that climate change and urban sprawl are detrimental to ecosystem function and biodiversity.

Thoughts?