[Coral-List] non artificial reef structures

[Douglas Fenner]

Thanks, Bill!!  Amazing, fish in the pond influencing the plants on land!  Things are connected in ways we scarcely could guess.
     I think you are saying that the solution is to remove all those little places that collect fresh water where the mosquitoes breed, not spraying toxic chemicals all over.  Removing the little fresh water breeding places costs almost nothing, is totally non-toxic, causes no trophic cascades, can be done right away, is not hard.  The solution is right in front of us, low tech, simple, easy, costs nearly nothing.  But are the Keys full of lots of drainage canals full of fresh water that can't be drained??     Cheers,  Doug  

 


________________________________
From: Bill Allison <allison.billiam at gmail.com>
To: Douglas Fenner <douglasfenner at yahoo.com>
Cc: Rudy Bonn <rudy_bonn at yahoo.com>; "coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov" <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, November 2, 2011 5:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] non artificial reef structures


Complexities:
1. Both reduction or augmentation of dragonfly abundance would presumably cause trophic cascades that cut across ecosystems and that may not be desirable (e.g., dragonfly larvae and adults feed upon a variety of prey including not only those we might want diminished such as mosquitoes and deerflies, but also upon insect pollinators, influencing their abundance and behaviour (Knight et al., 2005)).
2. Mosquitoes can reproduce in very small volumes and very shallow sheets of water (e.g., cans, bottles, film of water produced by air-conditioner drip) common in, but not limited to urban habitats, that preclude dragonfly reproduction so logically it is such habitats that should be removed.
3. Dragonflies and other arthropod and vertebrate insectivores (generally in decline) have much longer reproductive cycles 
than their prey with implications for both population recovery and 
adaptation to selective stressors such as insecticides to which mosquitoes adapt rather quickly. The "solution" is the problem and more than band-aids are required.

Ref:
Knight, T. M., W. M. Michael, et al. (2005). "Trophic cascades across ecosystems." Nature 437(7060): 880-883.
    Predation can be intense, creating strong direct and indirect effects throughout food webs1–4. In addition, ecologists increasingly recognize that fluxes of organisms across ecosystem boundaries can have major consequences for community dynamics5,6. Species with complex life histories often shift habitats during their life cycles7 and provide potent conduits coupling ecosystems5,6. Thus, local interactions that affect predator abundance in one ecosystem (for example a larval habitat) may have reverberating effects in another (for example an adult habitat). Here we show that fish indirectly facilitate terrestrial plant reproduction through cascading trophic interactions across ecosystem boundaries. Fish reduce larval dragonfly abundances in ponds, leading to fewer adult dragonflies nearby. Adult dragonflies consume insect pollinators and alter their foraging behaviour. As a result, plants near ponds with fish receive more pollinator visits and
 are less pollen limited than plants near fish-free ponds. Our results confirm that strong species interactions can reverberate across ecosystems, and emphasize the importance of landscape-level processes in driving local species interactions.




On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 12:21 PM, Douglas Fenner <douglasfenner at yahoo.com> wrote:

I seem to remember that dragon flies are predators that eat mosquitoes.  They are also insects, so the insecticides surely kill them as well.  I wonder if in a test location away from people if the insecticide were stopped and large numbers of dragon flies were released, if the mosquitoes couldn't be controlled that way?  I have no idea whether mass dragonfly culture has been worked out.  Or maybe there is some other way.  Just removing standing fresh water where they can breed should help.      Cheers,  Doug
>
> 
>Douglas Fenner
>Coral Reef Monitoring Ecologist
>Dept Marine & Wildlife Resources
>American Samoa
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>________________________________
>From: Rudy Bonn <rudy_bonn at yahoo.com>
>To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2011 9:34 AM
>Subject: [Coral-List] non artificial reef structures
>
>
>Your right Gene, helicopters flying over the place spraying, small trucks with sprayers in the beds are spraying small streets, and even people are getting sprayed down here during fantasy fest, not with malathion though, naked people getting sprayed with body paint, some of them should keep their clothes on believe me, and the funny thing is Im still get bitten by mosquitoes daily when I walk my dogs,  maybe the buggers have developed an immunity, what is sad though when it rains, and you know what its like down here when it rains heavily, all that malathion and everything else gets washed right into the ocean via storm drains where it eventually reaches the reef tract,   are we as humans losing our minds or what?  When you here talk all the time about my grandkids not being able to see a living coral reef, something is wrong with that picture, when are we going to learn, when we finally destroy it all?   
>
>Rudy S Bonn
>Director of Marine Projects
>Reef Relief
>631 Greene Street
>Key West, FL 33040
>305-294-3100
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