Humans have been spreading all kinds of fruit species since the prehistoric times… No import/export permits, no quarantines… anything goes with them where ever whenever …
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just like migratory animal species, there are no borders nor countries, just your flock or your tribe.
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So you’ve no objection to someone planting an HLB infected Citrus or Pierce infected grape next to your yard?
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Let this be a nice discussion. Rather than accusing each other of spreading diseases, why not try to look at this from a broader perspective, something that will have solutions. People from the ancient times didn’t worry about these, as the fruit trees that they bring with them either thrived, became invasive, domesticated, or have met their match of diseases when monocropped and were naturally selected that they have equilibriated peacefully to the land areas where they have been brought. They have at least tens of thousands of years of cultivation while we only have citruses in California for less than a hundred years.
It is only a matter of time for diseases to spread no matter what we do, we can prolong it, but it will ultimately get here or achieve steady state equilibrium. It isn’t the end of the fruit world. It is good to be proactive to study the diseases from an ecological perspective at their places of origin. It is also good to study how fruit trees, insect species, microbes could become invasive or a problem in new areas by studying them before they eventually get here.
For several millenia we have been spreading various flora and fauna and eventually their microflora and microfauna will catch up and we often are unprepared. Some have already become endemic and achieved nice equilibrium in the US.
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“Let this be a nice discussion”… That’s a beautiful response.
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I’m certainly not accusing you!
I disagree and I think such statements are rooted in over-zealous desire.
A phage has been developed that destroys Pierce disease. Now if a supplier of grapes were not to obtain phytosanitary clearance for their plants and some of them are infected, then the consumer has recourse to collect for remediation of their property.
So just because historical peoples spread plants without boundaries is no reason to continue the process. They did so with great ignorance – and sometimes with great greed.
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I believe it’s a good idea to slow them down. Their was no equilibrium for Japanese beetles. It’s a different ecosystem and these thing disrupted ours tremendously. The elm is gone around here, so is the ash,maybe in 100 years it might come back. Nothing was here to check the emerald ash borer. Equilibrium didn’t happen, total destruction of all ash trees, every one of them, is what happened. I will never see one this big in this area again.A real bummer when this beautiful tree died. Russell island is about 1.5 miles by .75 miles. 190 trees were cut down. I would guess in Michigan the total amount was in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
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I think history shows us that not all people or fruit migration has a fairy tale ending unfortunately. Permits, quarantines, etc. are a way to avoid or minimize bad outcomes.
Its all about the rate … things are moving too fast now, before the ecosystem can adjust to one new plant bug or disease another new one shows up. Historically migrations were hundreds of times slower than today.
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Not only this, but because the migrations were slower and smaller in terms of distance there was a much smaller chance of bringing with a disease or pest that could not have already made the journey. Any long distance transport of seeds simply couldn’t bring with certain pests. Just as an example, Pre-Columbian people brought squash all across the Americas, but you don’t see SVB west of the rocky mountains.
I sometimes like to think of invasive species/introduced diseases/etc as accelerated evolution. Introductions and extinctions will happen regardless, just depends if it’s slow and natural or rapid and man-made.
That being said, if anyone wants my Spotted Lanternfly, please take them.
We can thank “invasive” species for lager beer: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160706172030.htm
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invasive species include the fungus that killed the elm tree, phylloxera-whatever-its-spelled that crushed the grape industry in Europe some time ago, syphilis in the Hawaiian Islands and the rest of the New World, smallpox again in the new world, the blight that caused the irish potato famine, etc.
People have absolutely been spreading fruit. We’ve also spread carp, snakeheads, the American Bullfrog in Arizona, the lake trout in Yellowstone lake, the European starling, the brown vine snake in Guam, purple loostrife, garlic mustard, etc. etc…
some of these have been more benign than others, but many have been anywhere from mildly deleterious to catastrophic to environments. and spread of disease…well, I am not trying to pick a fight but to the guy who suggested all things spread eventually so why worry–tell that to the folks who died in the potato famine, or of smallpox in the US, which killed something like 80% or more of the native American populace as we colonized…or the ground-nesting birds in Guam, if you can find one.
I love me some apples and pears, but see no reason to be blithely indifferent to the spread of invasives just because of a very few relatively benign cases…clearly not all introductions are.
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