Hello Ms. Tatia Kuljanishvili,

First of all I would like to congratulate you on conjuring up a simple yet incredibly thought provoking question. But, the frame of mind you had while thinking about the subject as evident from your submission "I don't count most frequent cases like aquaculture, trade or ornamental and unintentional release as well", actually dims the brilliance of the question to a certain extent.

Almost any introduction, whether intentional or accidental, can be traced to one or all the avenues which you did not count. I wrote almost because the exceptions are very rare and negligible or otherwise not provided the attention they require because unless an introduced species is drastically changing the ecosystem for the natives, hardly any efforts are made to decipher their origins or on their control. And more often than naught, the result happens to be one of the issues mentioned above. Mass awareness or education also proved to be obstacles in preventing such spread of new (invasive) species as people were not diligent enough to scrutinize changes and to associate such changes with their own ignorant activities; and even if they did, they failed to predict the impact anyway.

The Indo-Pacific lion fishes in the Atlantic, Burmese/African python and snake heads into the everglades, the released African honey bees in Brazil, Silver carps in Mississippi, Welsh Catfish in Spain, Pacu fishes in Papua New Guinea, loricarids and African catfish in India etc are all accidental or intentional releases that made the news because they are prominent and unmistakable. The introduction of rats and feral cats to far flung pacific islands and the ensuing devastation of endemic fauna are poignant examples of human ignorance, and have led to catastrophic decrease in biodiversity, exemplified by the radical decline in sea bird populations, extinction of tuataras from their native mainlands. But in cases of introduction of plants, people hardly take stock of the situation before the introduced plants bring homogenization to the ecosystem and affect everything else depending on it for better or worse. Most of our crops are cases of accidental or intentional introductions. However, planktonic species are being introduced on a daily basis across the world without anyone getting a whiff of it unless the species survives the change and becomes dominant and starts to restructure the biomass pyramid from the ground up and this is far more important than any other introductions being discussed anywhere since not only it is capable of the change but it actually changes. To study the issue in-depth people need to have a serious understanding of how the earth works and there lies the limitation.

The last aspect of your question is the most important and to my knowledge any introduction of diazotrophs to improve arid land fertility or mass cultivation of biofuel producing plants/diatoms (although controlled but has the potential to be established as escaped species) or even the use of seaweeds or other macroalgae to combat issues of eutrophication of aquifer or wastewater where the species of algae as Nitella or Chara or other macrophytes such as Hydrilla, Egeria, Cabomba etc can all be classified as introduction of species in a targeted area.

I again thank you for such an interesting topic to be discussed.

With warm regards,

Dr. Abhishek Mukherjee

Hello Ms. Tatia Kuljanishvili,

First of all I would like to congratulate you on conjuring up a simple yet incredibly thought provoking question. But, the frame of mind you had while thinking about the subject as evident from your submission "I don't count most frequent cases like aquaculture, trade or ornamental and unintentional release as well", actually dims the brilliance of the question to a certain extent.

Almost any introduction, whether intentional or accidental, can be traced to one or all the avenues which you did not count. I wrote almost because the exceptions are very rare and negligible or otherwise not provided the attention they require because unless an introduced species is drastically changing the ecosystem for the natives, hardly any efforts are made to decipher their origins or on their control. And more often than naught, the result happens to be one of the issues mentioned above. Mass awareness or education also proved to be obstacles in preventing such spread of new (invasive) species as people were not diligent enough to scrutinize changes and to associate such changes with their own ignorant activities; and even if they did, they failed to predict the impact anyway.

The Indo-Pacific lion fishes in the Atlantic, Burmese/African python and snake heads into the everglades, the released African honey bees in Brazil, Silver carps in Mississippi, Welsh Catfish in Spain, Pacu fishes in Papua New Guinea, loricarids and African catfish in India etc are all accidental or intentional releases that made the news because they are prominent and unmistakable. The introduction of rats and feral cats to far flung pacific islands and the ensuing devastation of endemic fauna are poignant examples of human ignorance, and have led to catastrophic decrease in biodiversity, exemplified by the radical decline in sea bird populations, extinction of tuataras from their native mainlands. But in cases of introduction of plants, people hardly take stock of the situation before the introduced plants bring homogenization to the ecosystem and affect everything else depending on it for better or worse. Most of our crops are cases of accidental or intentional introductions. However, planktonic species are being introduced on a daily basis across the world without anyone getting a whiff of it unless the species survives the change and becomes dominant and starts to restructure the biomass pyramid from the ground up and this is far more important than any other introductions being discussed anywhere since not only it is capable of the change but it actually changes. To study the issue in-depth people need to have a serious understanding of how the earth works and there lies the limitation.

The last aspect of your question is the most important and to my knowledge any introduction of diazotrophs to improve arid land fertility or mass cultivation of biofuel producing plants/diatoms (although controlled but has the potential to be established as escaped species) or even the use of seaweeds or other macroalgae to combat issues of eutrophication of aquifer or wastewater where the species of algae as Nitella or Chara or other macrophytes such as Hydrilla, Egeria, Cabomba etc can all be classified as introduction of species in a targeted area.

I again thank you for such an interesting topic to be discussed.

With warm regards,

Dr. Abhishek Mukherjee

Hi there,

I am not sure what taxa you are working with, but in addition to what is reported above, with insects there are many instances of species introduced into a new habitat as "bio-control".

This is mostly the case when pest species are unintentionally introduced and, in order to get rid of them, a predator of such species is introduced too.

In all these cases, species introduction is usually driven by the relationship of the predator species with that (or those) it should help control. Often, in order to understand what species is a predator of the pest, it is important to study the pest in its country of origin to see if there are natural enemies over there. Therefore, you would usually end up introducing a new species (the bio-control agent) from the same country of the pest species you are trying to fight.

Hope this helps.

As stated before, pest control process has resulted in intentional release of other organisms into the host nation. In New Zealand, a virus was introduced to eradicate or control rabbits (rabbits are not native to New Zealand) whose uncontrolled population had been an issue in the absence of proper predators.

On the first occasion the virus from Australia was introduced by the frustrated farmers who could not gain government permit to introduce the virus formally. The above illegal virus introduction had a significant rabbit kill which provided sufficient relief to the farmers for several years. After nearly 2 decades, the virus is still effective in killing 20-30% of the rabbit population despite increasing immunity against the virus. The good news is, the virus did not affect any other NZ organisms since it has been very host specific affecting only rabbits.

More recently the NZ government approved another virus strain introduction whose effectiveness has been monitored by scientists.

Please see further information on rabbit control by introduced virus Technical Report RABBIT CONTROL IN THE OTAGO REGION - A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS

Hello, Thank you everybody for your answer!

This is amazing how much information you gave me!

I am concerned on aquatic species introduction but anyway any example would be nice, where the target place name has lead to introduction.

Let's imagine there is a fish less lake which is called "Trout lake", would it be motivation for local people to introduce trouts, although, trouts have nothing to do in that lake, because it is not the area where they naturally occur (for some reasons).

Have you ever heard of something like this? Is there any evidence?

When I used to work for the National Wild Turkey Federation, we did an informal survey of places with the name "turkey" like Turkey Knob WV, Turkey Hill, Pa and did some historical work to show that wild turkeys were once abundant in these places. I'm pretty sure during the early days of wild turkey restoration (1970s), one of the goals was to restore turkeys in all places where they used to be abundant, but were no longer because of habitat loss, poaching, deforestation,...etc. So yes, we may have focused on some places like Turkey Knob, WV to restore wild turkeys, but the name was not the primary driver of the reintroduction of a once-native species.

Revival of an ecosystem with the aim of garnering mass interest and/or revenue to look after the place OR conservation of a species associated with certain place which might have made the place famous in the past could be a driving force behind the introduction of a species OR naming a place after a particular animal/plant might put an offbeat place on the radar which again is for the generation of revenues and community income on the whole etc may be performed and have been performed in the past in order to save an ecosystem and the species therein by generating revenues through mass attractions wherever there had been a death in the budget allocated.

"TROUT LAKE" may or may not have harbored trout in the past, its geomorphological features might superficially resemble a trout, but if the introduction of the piscine namesake helped it to gain prominence through attracting people for trout fishing or even catch and release sports then the accrued monetary resources would be more than welcome by the neighborhood, but in that way the lake ecosystem itself may or may not be augmented since had there been other native species that could serve as food for trout and vice versa, the ecology of the lake might get drastically modified. The actual intents behind the introduction and the preparatory inspections prior to introduction are the two most significant governing aspects of conservation biology or biodiversity studies.

There are literally thousands of examples of places named after animals- from Coyote, New Mexico to Buffalo, New York; Chicken, Alaska to Swansea, Wales to Oyster Creek, New Jersey, the names galore- Countries like Turkey or Singapore (anglicized derivative of the Sanskrit composite word meaning Lion City) are also such examples- many of which showcases their animal counterparts as the state or country symbols and thus are well conserved while many other had them in the past and thus continuing with the historical recognition. There are even minor planets named after animals which may simply be the case of popularizing the discovery or there may be any distant semblances in shape with the animals themselves etc.

I hope you find what you are looking for.

With regards,

Dr. Abhishek Mukherjee

You have raeson! Thank!

Excuses me that I wrote a bad word: reason but not raeson! Thank!

Abhishek Mukherjee , Pacifico Perea , Francesco Martoni , Selva Selvarajah Thank you so much for such an amazing discussion!

I am happy for your replies they are really helpful!

The cane toad and Gambusia hoolbrooki were introduced as biological control agents to Australia a long time ago without careful assessment of the risk. The toad then affected crocodile's population and the fish brought some native species into extintion while their roles in controlling mosquito population cannot be confirmed.

I don't have an example for target place name leading to a species introduction. If you do have one/few we will be interested to know.

Since New Zealand is a geographically isolated nation with relatively young geological history, despite the human colonisation destroying 75% of the unique native flora and many animal species, and the wilful and accidental introduction of many exotic flora and fauna, the country is still vulnerable to newly introduced organisms. For the above reasons and the fact our economy relies heavily on primary production and tourism, we have one of the most stringent biosecurity legislation and border controls in the world.

The historical wilful introduction of the animals such as Australian possums, European rabbits, deer, goats, stoats, tahr (Himalayan goat), carp, Canadian geese etc. and plants such as gorse and broom and many accidental releases (rats, pest plants) have been costing our country in many millions to control or eradicate.

The most interesting introduction was trout and salmon which ironically have a special status in our environmental law (Resource Management Act 1991). Tourists flock into NZ to fish trout from our pristine lakes. However, the above was at the cost of losing several native fish species (because trout had been feeding on them) which are on the endangered species list. Currently, Department of Conservation of New Zealand (who have special powers) is considering some form of control of trouts (e.g. culling) to sustain our native fish population.

The case of the introduction of the Nile Perch in the great lakes of eastern Africa is one of the best documented cases of introduction of an exotic species for economic purposes that drove to massive extinction of most fish diversity in these ancient lakes, where the speciation processes of cyclids fish allowed a sympatric specition to hundreds of species, most of them nowadays extinguised by the strong predation by the Nile perch. You can see a detailed story in Pringle (2009) Article The Origins of the Nile Perch in Lake Victoria

Some have proposed introductions in response to climate change, to assist what might be a slower process of shift in species ranges. An example is introduction of a Mexican tree to the US in response to prediction that native trees in California will not persist under future climate conditions. This idea is only in the active discussion stage now.

A second reason is to import a pest of an exotic species for biological control

Here some case of introcuction :

1- Reason of (re)introduction of Eulemur collaris in the Southeasternmost littoral forest of Madagascar is to insure seeds dispersal.

2- Introduction of Acacia mangium in the Anosy region (Southeast of Madagascar) is to develop be rearing and to limit uncotrolled fire

3- Introduction of Acacia mangium in the north of Madagascar is to avoid deforestation by providing wood for local people