Invasive Species: Competition for Resources

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Competition for Resources

While all species compete to survive, invasive species appear to have specific traits or specific combinations of traits that allow them to outcompete native species. In some cases the competition is about rates of growth and reproduction. In other cases species interact with each other more directly.

An introduced species might become invasive if it can out-compete native species for resources, such as nutrients, light, physical space, water or food.

In 1990 Congress enacted IMMACT which gives us this: “under the new provisions; increases in the proportion of immigrants coming from Asia, with a corresponding decrease in the numbers from northern and western Europe”. All one needs to do is look around to see that that’s true.
Add that to all the Government and Business Sponsored Minority Privilege and what do ya get? According to BUSINESS.COM, you get “over 50 percent of all U.S. minority-owned businesses with sales exceeding $1 million are owned by Asian-Americans."
How did that fifty percent Asian ownership happen in what seems to be, so quickly? Once again, according to BUSINESS.COM, Bank of America and its special program called the “Minority and Women Prequalification Program” helps them but they’re far from the only ones.
BUSINESS.COM goes on to mention how Asians can “meet prospective customers in person at one of the regional procurement events sponsored by The US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce (USPAACC).”
Now who supports USPAACC? According to them, just about everybody. One Government Department they mention is The Social Security Administration and I wonder, do they mean this: “Greta is the admissions coordinator in a federally-subsidized senior citizens housing facility in the San Francisco Bay area. She remarks that, when one of her tenants, an immigrant from Taiwan whom we will call Wen, told her that he had just passed his citizenship test, “I was
congratulating and welcoming him, but he laughed and said, ‘Now they can’t take my [welfare] money away.’”

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Invasives

Invasive species, also called invasive exotics or simply exotics, is a nomenclature term and categorization phrase used for flora and fauna, and for specific restoration-preservation processes in native habitats, with several definitions.

The first definition, the most used, applies to introduced species (also called "non-indigenous" or "non-native") that adversely affect the habitats and bioregions they invade economically, environmentally, and/or ecologically. Such invasive species may be either plants or animals and may disrupt by dominating a region, wilderness areas, particular habitats, or wildland-urban interface land from loss of natural controls (such as predators or herbivores). This includes non-native invasive plant species labeled as exotic pest plants and invasive exotics growing in native plant communities. It has been used in this sense by government organizations as well as conservation groups such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the California Native Plant Society. The European Union defines "Invasive Alien Species" as those that are, firstly, outside their natural distribution area, and secondly, threaten biological diversity. It is also used by land managers, botanists, researchers, horticulturalists, conservationists, and the public for noxious weeds. The kudzu vine (Pueraria lobata), Andean Pampas grass (Cortaderia jubata), and yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) are examples.

The second definition includes the first, but broadens the boundaries to include indigenous or native species, with the non-native ones, that disrupt by a dominant colonization of a particular habitat or wildlands area from loss of natural controls (i.e.: predators or herbivores). Deer are an example, considered to be overpopulating their native zones and adjacent suburban gardens, by some in the Northeastern and Pacific Coast regions of the United States.

The third definition identifies invasive species as a widespread nonindigenous species. This one can be too broad, as not every nonindigenous or "introduced" species has an adverse effect on a nonindigenous environment. A nonadverse example is the common goldfish (Carassius auratus), though common outside its native range globally, it is rarely in harmful densities to a native habitat.