I'm (well) over my head and (well) outside whatever wheelhouse I might
occupy but I am compelled:
I think part of why this keeps circling is that we’re staying at the
level of language—what counts as an “it,” whether something qualifies as
an “invasive species.” Not unimportant, but downstream of the actual
dynamics?
What shows up first, at least in the field examples glen mentioned,
isn’t a species, it’s a change:
* crops failing
* pollination dropping
* something spreading
A shift in the landscape—some affordance opening up, some constraint
disappearing.
“invasive species” reads less like a fundamental category and more like
a label we apply post-hoc. Based on an identified a carrier that
matters to us. Anthrorelativism creeps in—we tend to call something
“invasive” when the change is fast /and/ intersects with human interests?
I’m more interested in the mismatch in timescales:
* ecosystems can reconfigure niches relatively quickly (disturbance,
climate, land use, etc.)
* species/genetic adaptation is significantly slower
you get situations where the niche landscape shifts faster than the
resident community can track, and then whatever competency bundle
happens to fit—whether already present or newly arrived—expands rapidly.
At that point, asking “what is the invasive species?” feels a bit like
asking for the name of the thing after the phase transition has already
started. Sometimes there is a clear “it,” sometimes there isn’t, or it’s
a constellation.
So I’m less concerned with pinning down the ontology up front, and more
with:
* what changed in the affordance structure
* how quickly it changed
* and which populations were able to respond on that timescale
The “invasive” label then becomes a kind of shorthand for that
high-rate, human-salient reconfiguration, rather than the starting point
of the explanation.
It also is deeply loaded with judgement, reflecting the "convenience" to
the observer?
.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ...
--- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
