WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

"Which is worse? Closing two locks on a waterway that's used to ship millions of dollars' worth of goods from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi basin? Or allowing a voracious Asian carp to deplete the food supply of native fish sustaining a Midwestern fishing industry that nets $7 billion a year?"

I'd like you to read the article that asks this question, and then I'd like you to answer it in your response.

Which is worse? What would you do if you were in charge?

The Washington Post Article, Tough Choices Follow In The Wake Of Invasive Species can be found here:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/30/AR2010013000939.html

(Note it looks like you will have to to cut and paste the address manually into your address bar in order to go to the article)

EVOLUTION AT WORK - THE HAWKMOTH & THE TOBACCO PLANT

A fascinating study was published last week in Current Biology about the relationship between the hawkmoth and the Coyote Tobacco plant, Nicotiana attenuata. N. attenuata is wild flowering plant found in the west, related but not the same as the cigarette tobacco plant grown in the south. (You may recognize it as a relative of the Nictiana plant that is a favorite perennial in New England gardens). The plant has developed - as many flowering plants have - a symbiotic relationship with its pollinator, the Hawkmoth. The moth picks up and disperses the plants pollen. The the benefit to the moth is that it frequently lays its eggs on the plant's leaves. When the eggs hatch, its larvae (the caterpillars) have their first meal - the plant itself.

This is obviously not a mutually beneficial relationship. Too many caterpillars and the tobacco plant population would begin to drop, and possibly disappear. The plant faces a choice: adapt or die.

Scientists has recently observed a startling adaptation taking place. The plant normally flowers in the evening hours during Hawkmoth high flight times. Recently, however, the tobacco plant has begun to flower during the morning, attracting a new and different pollinator: a hummingbird that has no interest in devouring its provider of nectar.

This is evolution at work. The plant has a choice in a figurative sense. It doesn't have a working brain capable of strategizing a plan for its own survival. There is something more primitive at work. Something elegant in its simplicity, and powerful in its determination: natural selection.

Natural selection, one of Darwin's main ideas in his theory of evolution is commonly thought of as "survival of the fittest". It refers to the fact that there is a great deal of variation within a population or organisms, in this case the tobacco plants. Most of the plants flowered at night and had a higher likelihood of being eaten by Hawkmoth larvae. A few plants, flowered earlier in the day. The earlier flowering plants survived, thrived, and passed their genetic code on to the subsequent generation of plants. They're the ones who had higher survival rates. The balance shifted between night flowering plants and morning flowering plants shifted towards to morning plants.

Interestingly though, the night flowering plants remain. Scientists hypothesize that the moths, which fly over a much larger territory, are superior pollinator and capable of spreading the plant's pollen to plants further away than the hummingbirds are able to.

Regardless - more and more of the tobacco plants began to flower in the early morning hours. This adaptation gave the population of tobacco plants the opportunity to recover and stablilize, ultimately strengthening this new trait that aids their survival. The species has changed. It has adapted to thwart a negative force in its environment.

It has evolved.

THE $177,000 TUNA FISH

This ties in perfectly with the ideas and themes we have recently been discussing: humans want what they want when they want it.

The New York Times reported yesterday that a large (513 pound) blue fin tuna was caught and sold in Japan recently. How rare is a catch like that in today's depleted ocean waters? Rare enough to be worth $177,000 to a couple of sushi restaurants.

Here's what was reported:

"TOKYO (AP) -- A giant bluefin tuna fetched 16.3 million yen ($177,000) in an auction Tuesday at the world's largest wholesale fish market in Japan.

The 513-pound (233-kilogram) fish was the priciest since 2001 when a 440-pound (200 kilogram) tuna sold for a record 20.2 million yen ($220,000) at Tokyo's Tsukiji market.

The gargantuan tuna was bought and shared by the owners of two Japanese sushi restaurants and one Hong Kong-based sushi establishment, said a market representative on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.

Caught off the coast of northern Japan, the big tuna was among 570 put up for auction Tuesday. About 40 percent of the auctioned fish came from abroad, including from Indonesia and Mexico, the representative said.

Japan is the world's biggest consumer of seafood with Japanese eating 80 percent of the Atlantic and Pacific bluefins caught. The two tuna species are the most sought after by sushi lovers.

However, tuna consumption in Japan has declined because of a prolonged economic slump as the world's second-largest economy struggles to shake off its worst recession since World War II.

''Consumers are shying away from eating tuna ... We are very worried about the trend,'' the market representative said.

Apart from falling demand for tuna, wholesalers are worried about growing calls for tighter fishing rules amid declining tuna stocks.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas in November slashed the quota for the 2010 catch by about one-third to 13,500 tons (12,250 metric tons) -- a move criticized by environmentalists as not going far enough."

What to you think? Is cutting the quota for 2010 by one-third enough? Or should we do more?