Marine scientists discovered an ocean-borne fungus chomping through plastic trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
  • Paragone@lemmy.world
    42·
    5 months ago

    This may all SEEM fine & dandy, but…

    The such ocean gyres, if I’m remembering what they’re called correctly, had a normal, established-for-millions-of-years kind-of-ecology in them…

    NOW, however, we’re forcing that this fungus become a dominant-player in them…

    WHAT DOES THAT FUNGUS DO TO THE OTHER ORGANISMS IN THAT ECOLOGY?

    ( people may remember some years ago when the Purple Loostrife we imported was killing all our North American marshes, turning them into thickets of woody stems/runners/etc, & each individual plant could put out 50,000 seeds per year…

    So, the Canadian Gov’t did test after test after test, & finally resolved that a … Chinese, iirc, ladybird bug ate the stuff, but didn’t eat any other plants…

    so, they imported them & let them loose…

    You know those new orange ladybird bugs?

    the ones that bite animals?

    Those are the ones, ttbomk.

    They don’t eat any other plants, other than purple loostrife, but their habit of biting us means that carnivorism is normal in them, and … how does that affect the ecology??

    You can’t just arbitrarily alter ecologies & responsibly expect them to remain functionally-balanced, & in-harmony: consequences tend to multiply each-other, & tipping-points do get crossed. )

    _ /\ _

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      41·
      5 months ago

      The ecology changes until a new balance is reached. People can be a bit overly fatalist about these realities. Its not like we’ve never witnessed an ecology change before.

      But the more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the more this tiger-by-the-tail we’ve got called Climate Change is worked up. Bad news if your civilization craves stability.