WP2 Part 2: Comment

WP2 Part 2: Comments

1) Reply to commenter:

I completely agree with how animals being plucked from their natural environment can be detrimental to their species’ survival. However, my main concern over this issue is how certain smuggled animals can pose a larger threat to the area they are introduced to rather than where they were exported from. The United States is no stranger to invasive species destroying ecosystems by this time, with Burmese pythons and Argentinian tegus in Florida competing with the native apex predators, goldfish competing for natural resources statewide, and cane toads that not only threaten almost every species of predator but also endanger human and house pet livelihoods. Even animals that are not able to compete with the local wildlife, they can carry foreign fungi, viruses and pathogens and introduce them to areas where the susceptible animals carry no genetic resistances. There is also the chance where an alien species is a close enough relative of a native species to reproduce. This can cause genetic diseases and gene impurity, where hybrids are created and the original species can go extinct. This is evident in the California, in which certain newt species that were never supposed to meet due to geological separation were introduced to each others’ environments caused them to crossbreed into one single subspecies.