"One researcher just determined that African and Indian elephants make each other sick. When a new animal or plant is introduced to a habitat bad things happen. The biggest danger to native wildlife is foreign wildlife"
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Bakker highlights a harsh ecological reality: species evolve with their own parasites, pathogens, and symbionts, forming a delicate equilibrium through coevolution. When distant lineages suddenly meet, that balance shatters. Pathogens that are benign or subclinical in one host can become lethal in another that lacks evolutionary exposure. The idea that African and Asian elephants can make each other sick distills a broad principle, cross-species pathogen spillover, into a vivid example of how even closely related megafauna can harbor microbes that become deadly when they jump hosts.
The pattern repeats across ecosystems. European grey squirrels carry a parapoxvirus that devastates native red squirrels in the UK. Avian malaria and introduced mosquitoes pushed many Hawaiian forest birds to the brink. Amphibian chytrid fungus, moved around the globe with trade, knocked out entire frog assemblages. Chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease rewrote North American forests. The brown tree snake on Guam, cane toads in Australia, and zebra mussels in the Great Lakes show that it’s not only disease: predation, competition, and habitat engineering by newcomers can cascade through food webs.
Two mechanisms often drive the damage. First, naive immunity: native species have not coevolved with the invader’s pathogens. Second, ecological release: newcomers arrive without their own predators and parasites, gaining an advantage while exporting harm through pathogen spillover or spillback. Human activity, global trade, pet and plant markets, ballast water, wildlife translocation, accelerates these contacts, making biosecurity, quarantine, and surveillance essential conservation tools.
The claim that foreign wildlife is the “biggest danger” is deliberately provocative; habitat loss and climate change remain dominant threats globally. Yet the point stands: biotic invasions and the diseases they ferry can be swift, irreversible, and system-wide. Preventing introductions is far less costly than undoing them. Protect native communities by minimizing biological mixing, rigorously screening movements of organisms, and treating pathogen dynamics as central to wildlife management.
The pattern repeats across ecosystems. European grey squirrels carry a parapoxvirus that devastates native red squirrels in the UK. Avian malaria and introduced mosquitoes pushed many Hawaiian forest birds to the brink. Amphibian chytrid fungus, moved around the globe with trade, knocked out entire frog assemblages. Chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease rewrote North American forests. The brown tree snake on Guam, cane toads in Australia, and zebra mussels in the Great Lakes show that it’s not only disease: predation, competition, and habitat engineering by newcomers can cascade through food webs.
Two mechanisms often drive the damage. First, naive immunity: native species have not coevolved with the invader’s pathogens. Second, ecological release: newcomers arrive without their own predators and parasites, gaining an advantage while exporting harm through pathogen spillover or spillback. Human activity, global trade, pet and plant markets, ballast water, wildlife translocation, accelerates these contacts, making biosecurity, quarantine, and surveillance essential conservation tools.
The claim that foreign wildlife is the “biggest danger” is deliberately provocative; habitat loss and climate change remain dominant threats globally. Yet the point stands: biotic invasions and the diseases they ferry can be swift, irreversible, and system-wide. Preventing introductions is far less costly than undoing them. Protect native communities by minimizing biological mixing, rigorously screening movements of organisms, and treating pathogen dynamics as central to wildlife management.
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| Topic | Nature |
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