Novel Ecosystems Quotes

“The success of Asian and North American trees is partly down to the absence of similar European evergreens, which died out during the ice ages.”
― Chris D. Thomas

“Foreign species are acting like any other species: a few have major impacts, but most don’t. Because a large majority of them have such limited impacts, the importation of lots of new species almost always increases the numbers of species in any given location, just as we saw in the forests and waters of Lake Maggiore. When lots of new arrivals establish breeding populations, hardly any ‘natives’ die out as a consequence.”
― Chris D. Thomas, Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction

“Foreign leaves feed many a marsupial, grub and duck. Koalas often munch on American cypress pine needles and camphor laurel leaves. (They also like to perch in camphor laurels in summer for the cool shade they throw.) Exotic foods, and I don’t just mean weeds, are thoroughly enmeshed in foodwebs. Most Australia’s birds of prey take exotic meats. A study around Mildura found that young rabbits were the staple food (60-92 percent by weight) of eagles, goshawks, harriers, kites and falcons – eight species in all. That was be calicivirus struck. Wedge-tailed eagles will eat feral cats. In Western Australia little eagles moved into the south-west when rabbits arrived, then retreated after myxomatosis struck. House mice feed hawks, snakes and owls in central Australia, making up to 97 percent of barn owl diets.”
― Tim Low, Radio Volume 2