Pycnogonid
Well-Known Member
Oh. Well, as long as the rhino enclosures are sufficiently closed off, the flies should stay in. Plus, these insects are exclusive to rhinos and have never been found outside rhinos.
Conservation of parasites.
- Thread starter Pycnogonid
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d1am0ndback
Well-Known Member
The whole point was that you HAVE to test them on rhinos to see if they really are exclusive to rhinos, which was shown why you need to in an example, therefore
is not reasoning at all to bring them with the rhinos.
Secondly, you can't have the rhinos enclosure "sufficiently closed off" without taking extreme precautions that would make everything significantly more difficult and expensive, and even then some may get out. Precautions such as at the Fort Worth Zoo's MOLA building where staff HAVE to deep freeze or incinerate anything leaving the area that stores invertebrates just in case eggs or an invertebrate are hiding inside anything such as leaf litter, simply so that they don't escape and cause a mess in the ecosystem.
Think about these implications with a rhino exhibit. How would staff clean it? What if that rhino needed to be transferred to another zoo? How expensive would constructing preventative measures and procedures to keep the flies contained be? How would visitors view the rhino in these conditions? Keep in mind, anything leaving that exhibit could hold the flies, and start an ecological headache.
Pycnogonid
Well-Known Member
I guess, rhino bot flies aren't that good of an example. I guess the best we can do for them is to protect the national parks where wild rhinos live.
Parasites are often cultivated in labs, but it is normally done on a related domestic model. In this hypothetical case of rhinoceros botfly, the realistic thing would be to try rearing them on a horse in a lab in some African university.
Otherwise, parasites of wild animals are terribly understudied, and few examples of endangered parasites and parasites important to their hosts might be invalid whatsoever, or might really signal a big problem of disappearing parasites.
A side thought. One thing which might improve situation would be finding some practical use of parasites. For example they use clever means to bypass host immune system. Maybe this can be useful in medicine, e.g. in transplantology or automimmune diseases.
Otherwise, parasites of wild animals are terribly understudied, and few examples of endangered parasites and parasites important to their hosts might be invalid whatsoever, or might really signal a big problem of disappearing parasites.
A side thought. One thing which might improve situation would be finding some practical use of parasites. For example they use clever means to bypass host immune system. Maybe this can be useful in medicine, e.g. in transplantology or automimmune diseases.
Pycnogonid
Well-Known Member
I would like to note that host species have no more intrinsic value than their parasites.
I disagree; just think of domestic livestock bred for human consumption. There is no "market" for Ascaris suum or Taenia saginata, but for their hosts.
Furthermore, it is no coincindence that Baylisascaris schroederi, unlike its most popular host, isn't the iconic logo of the WWF, too.
overread
Well-Known Member
This is the only sane sensible way to support any ecosystem.
With our modern understandings we are far more aware of the potential damage non-native species can cause to ecosystems when released (either by escape, accident or deliberate intent). Zoos by intent/evolution already typically hold many species that are non-native and even holding mammals, birds and larger species presents many challenges to ensuring that they do not escape or are nor released into the wild.
Having to fully isolate species so that host-specific parasites could survive upon them would be a vast increase in costs to run; plus it would also put the zoo into a very high-risk situation. Exclusivity to a host species is valid when within its own ecosystem; but nature has often shown ways to adapt and it might well be that your benign species in one ecosystem can suddenly find ways to survive and even thrive out of control in a new ecosystem; at a cost to the health of the new ecosystem.
On top of this consider that parasite species are endangered because of endangered host species; as a result you've already got a limited breeding population in captivity for release. If you're going to then further split that in half between infected and non-infected you raise a significant problem as to viable breeding stock; not to mention increasing the complexity of any breeding/exchange of stock between infected sites across international boarders (let alone within a country).
There is viable argument that reintroduction might work better if captive species are exposed to parasitic species that they would naturally encounter in the wild. However the complexity of such a scheme is insane unless you run the program within the native environment. Indeed I think the only viable approach to this scheme would be in-situ conservation. Where you've got captive populations within their natural environment and within collections exclusive to that environment. At least then you've removed potential cross contamination and escape problems; or at least limited the former to only transferring to human hosts.
Sorry, Batto. It does seem that there is a market for Ascaris: Wedding and function caterers in Herefordshire| Ascari's outside wedding catering
Pycnogonid
Well-Known Member
That's why I said intrinsic. As in, default. All value we see in cuddly mammals over their parasites is purely aesthetic. There is no reason tapeworms are inherently less valuable than mammals both are organisms that exist. It's just that we find on more appealing.
I wondered what happened to the Village People.
I think it was better when the Oxford comma was a butterfly.
Pycnogonid
Well-Known Member
I was referring to endangered species. Even then, parasites can be of functional, medicinal or dietary use, such as parasitic wasps, mistletoes, and cochineal bugs.
And I was referring to both commercial livestock and wildlife conservation; you just chose to ignore that.
Didn't you claim before that there are no value differences? And now you try to cherry-pick useful parasites? That's a bit of a contradiction, isn't it?
Didn't you claim before that there are no value differences? And now you try to cherry-pick useful parasites? That's a bit of a contradiction, isn't it?
Pycnogonid
Well-Known Member
Cherry picking? You said that in both wildlife conservation and livestock, free living species are useful, and I responded to both.
In wildlife conservation, the value charismatic megafuna have over parasites is purely aesthetic.
In commercial use, both free living and parasitic species have their places.
Reference to commercial livestock-???
Never wrote that. You might take another look at my previous posts before jumping to conclusions.
Only in most unequal emphasis.