Butterfly release debate

[Patrick Foley]

Paul,

Bruce Walsh and I both have PhD's in population genetics from the same school
of researchers (Felsenstein, Slatkin, Turelli etc). Bruce is presently more
expert on quantitative genetics than I am, but I helped to teach him
quantitative genetics in the first place at UCDavis, so I am not a fool about
it. I am better versed in biogeography, extinction theory and epidemiology. I
state my credentials to counter the argument by appeal to authority you seem
to be making. There are better authorities than Bruce on these issues,
although his ideas are worthy of consideration. Your dismissal of Brower and
others is wrong. They bring a lot of background and experience to the table,
and if not geneticists themselves, they are in communication with lots of
them.

Bruce exaggerates the effectiveness of the molecular techniques he mentions.
Even without the messes caused by random releases, no one has succeeded in
reconstructing the details of animal migrations with these techniques. Look
at Avise's book 2000 Phylogeography as an example of the state of the art,
good not great.

You are unaware of any diseases of monarch butterflies. This is not a very
persuasive argument. I am not an insect pathologist, but a visit to the
library would surely turn up something, or a visit to the microscope. If you
seriously believe that monarch butterflies harbor no fungi, no bacteria, no
viruses, no transposons, no parasites whatsoever, then you should demonstrate
that and win a Nobel prize in medicine. The monarch would be unique to
science! And are you suggesting that only monarchs should be released? Or
only Painted ladies and monarchs. Should we draw a line there in your
opinion?

As I have written. Vanessa has speciated in North America alone, despite its
wanderings, which suggests that isolated populations have occurred and were
perhaps best left to themselves at the time. But you feel safe in releasing
painted ladies anywhere in NA?

Look, some of you have a vested interest in releases. Some field researchers
have a vested interest against release. I have neither. My research is
theoretical nad natural historical, but I personally can live with releases.
I also have been a proponent of insect releases for biological control of
weeds (and have studied potential agents against Yellow Star Thistle). As an
ecologist and evolutionist, I enjoy seeing the world work out its problems on
its own, but I would like to see people have as much freedom as their sense
of responsibility allows. I'd like to see the proreleasers show enough sense
of responsibility to fund the research to understand the world they want to
mess with. And if you can't do that, and you don't want to wait for the
scientific debate to settle out, than draw some clear cut lines in the sand.
Which species are open for release and where?

Patrick Foley
patfoley at csus.edu

PS This is more fun than grading tests, but I have to get back to it. Have
fun with the problem.

Paul Cherubini wrote:

> Pat Foley wrote:
>
> > Fst is a composite index of population subdivision. It does not deal
> > with all the details and does not identify and reveal the uniqueness of
> > all the small populations. Who cares about small populations? Read
> > the literature. Most modern evolutionary scientists suspect that much
> > of the future of a lineage lies in rarish events in small populations.
>
> I am unaware of any evidence that would suggest there are
> any local, semi-isolated or isolated populations of monarch
> butterflies or painted ladies in the 48 USA states.
>
> > Do you want proof that increasing population intercommunication
> > increases disease transmission and epidemics? Read the literature on
> > epidemiology!
>
> No outbreaks of any infectious diseases have been known to occur in
> wild populations of the monarch butterfly.
>
> > Do you want proof that random butterfly transplants confuses the
> > research on butterflies? Read what the researchers have to say. Read
> > Brower and Opler and Ehrlich and Hanski. Or talk to them.
>
> Yes, we read in detail the opinion Dr's Lincoln Brower, Chip Taylor,
> Karen Oberhauser and eleven other monarch scientists about how
> coast to coast releases of monarchs could confuse attempts to look
> detect signatures of historical migrations. But none of these scientists
> are population geneticists.
>
> Earlier this year geneticist Bruce Walsh explained why even massive
> transfers would not confound these types of studies: Bruce wrote:
>
> "Of potentially greater concern for scientific studies is the impact of
> transfers on studies of the genetic structure  of a populations, in
> particular studies of whether apparently disjunction populations have
> historically exchanged genes.    Transfers may confound such studies
> if (1) unlinked markers are used AND (2) transfers comprise a
> significant fraction of the population.  However, human geneticists
> have developed methods based on tightly linked markers (STRs
> [simple trandem arrays] linked to SNPs [single nucleotide
> polymorphisms] ) that allow the age of migration events to be
> ascertained.  These approaches have been used to distinguish recent
> from historical human migrations.  As a biologist, the question of
> interest in not very recent gene exchange, but rather the historical
> levels of exchange that  occurred before humans were present.
> The newer multiple linked marker methods directly address this
> issue. Thus, if one uses the more recent approaches (as would be
> required to obtain publishable results for front-line journals), even
> massive transfers would not confound these studies."
>
> Paul Cherubini, Placerville, CA