# Big time action Taken for Little Beetle



## Entomo-logic (Dec 29, 2010)

Hey all check this link out *http://tinyurl.com/tiger-beetle*

This article explains how the Xerces Society and other groups are filing a lawsuit against the US Fish and Wildlife to designate more critical habitat for the CRITICALLY ENDANGERED Salt Creek Tiger Beetle (Cicindela nevadica lincolniana).

This is exciting and a BIG WIN for Invertebrate conservation.


----------



## ismart (Dec 29, 2010)

Thanks for the link!  I do hope the Xerces Society wins the land for these beetles.


----------



## hibiscusmile (Dec 29, 2010)

Ditto!


----------



## PeterF (Dec 29, 2010)

Attended a seminar from the Xerces Society. They seem like good people.


----------



## PhilinYuma (Dec 30, 2010)

ismart said:


> Thanks for the link!  I do hope the Xerces Society wins the land for these beetles.


As you know, Paul, I have the highest admiration for you, both in terms of your ability as a long-time breeder and as part of the backbone -- long before I joined -- of this forum. That said, why are we so darned eager to save a tiger beetle (and I admit that they are particularly cute) at the cost of human development and jobs? We seldom hear the full story on these things, and in this case, it seems that Fish and Wildlife shot themselves in the foot by going below their own level of sustainability, but if it ever comes to a contest between an obscure beetle and folks having jobs and feeding their kids, the beetle is going to come in a poor second in my book!


----------



## Entomo-logic (Dec 30, 2010)

You see the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle is not the only thing at stake here. The whole Eastern Nebraska Saline Wetlands Ecosystem is in danger of going extinct. There is only 1% of this very unique habitat left in tact. Mitigation and dredging have severely altered the hydrology of this system and has limited the beetles to a whole 3 spots of vertical bank about 3 feet above the water line in Little Salt Creek where they can oviposit, this coupled with the fact that the light pollution from the city of Lincoln is drawing the beetles away from these sites which prevents them from ovipositing at all!

This system also supports very unique and rare plants such as Saltwort(Salicornia rubra), Sea Blight(Suaeda depressa), Inland Saltgrass (Distichlis spicata). And is host to a whole bunch of saline specialized invertebrates.

This Habitat and its residence are poorly understood and are in danger of becoming extinct. It would be a shame for this to be destroyed by urban sprawl. And if you let this habitat go extinct then are you saying that its OK to slash and burn the rain forest so families can raise crops and build houses?


----------



## ismart (Dec 30, 2010)

PhilinYuma said:


> As you know, Paul, I have the highest admiration for you, both in terms of your ability as a long-time breeder and as part of the backbone -- long before I joined -- of this forum. That said, why are we so darned eager to save a tiger beetle (and I admit that they are particularly cute) at the cost of human development and jobs? We seldom hear the full story on these things, and in this case, it seems that Fish and Wildlife shot themselves in the foot by going below their own level of sustainability, but if it ever comes to a contest between an obscure beetle and folks having jobs and feeding their kids, the beetle is going to come in a poor second in my book!


Ah yes, I see what you mean Phil. This is really a no win situation. I cant lie and say i would not want to support my family. I would do anything i can to keep food on the table. On the other hand, i just cant seem to want to condone the genocide of a species due to our continued population growth. That being said, this reminds me of a conversation i had with a co-worker not long ago. The topic that came up was, would you eat another human being if you had too? Of course in like a situation of being stranded on the himalayan mountains, or stuck on a raft lost at sea, or similar situations etc... She had told me, no matter what she would not eat another human being, even if this ment her own demise. My answer to her was, I'm really not much of a healthy eater. I would probably go for the dark meat. Legs, and thighs are my fav! :lol:


----------



## PhilinYuma (Dec 31, 2010)

Tony, Paul:

Those were a few interesting posts if only because we discussed different views on an emotionally charged subject without taking potshots at each other. But, we all cheated a little, though my cheating was the worst and was deliberate (hey, if you've taught rhetoric, its a pity not to use it!). By opposing the survival of a small beetle to the plight of homeless families, displaced or denied a home to meet the beetles' needs, I was taking a serious liberty. Firstly, there is hardly a shortage of housing at the moment, and secondly, there was no mention that the "preserve" was to be on developed land.

By changing the argument to make the intiative a habitat conservation one, rather than a simple species protection one, you greatly improved the force of yor argument, I thought, Tony, so you didn't really need to compare saving a small beetle and a small area of wetland equivalent to chopping down huge chunks of the South American jungle which are essential (or so it would appear) for sustaining our oxygen supply. "Slash and burn" has a really savage sound to it, doesn't it? Just think of all those nasty Indians, slashing and burning! Alas, it is illegal and poorly regulated forestry that seems to be doing most of the damage.

And Paul! I loved the story about the wouldn't be cannibal; I'm sure that the members of the Donner party felt the same way until they got stuck in that pass! But failure to protect the habitat of a beetle is not the same as genocide, which is the systematic and deliberate destruction of a group of _people_! And poachers didn't "murder' mountain gorillas any more than a hunter murders a rabbit. At most, the beetles would be collateral damage! Personally, I hope that the beetles survive, even though I shall never see them.

Anyway, good fun and a nice thread!


----------



## Entomo-logic (Dec 31, 2010)

Phil, that was certainly a good way to get a reaction!

You see in my eyes no one habitat is any more important than another because they all bring their own special castes of Flora and Fauna that all contribute to the world in their own special way. As John Muir said "WHEN ONE TUGS AT A SINGLE THING IN NATURE, HE FINDS IT ATTACHED TO THE REST OF THE WORLD."

I get very upset when people make the argument it is "an obscure beetle" or that it is "just a bug" because it is a Tiger Beetle species that has specialized to a specific habitat over millions of years and is now being pushed from it's home land much like the "Indians" (Native Americans) were pushed out by the European settlers who founded this country. That was Genocide and just because it is "just an animal" killing off a whole race or species of insect is no better than killing off a whole race of humans, to me.

Plus this Beetle does put food on the table and pays the bills for all the Fish and Wildlife officers that are payed to protect it and employees of the Lincoln's Children Zoo and the Omaha Zoo (Where I work with these beetles).

So that's why I got so Fired up.

Any way

Have a Happy New Year.


----------



## ismart (Jan 1, 2011)

Of course it's genocide phil! The beetles are my peoples! :lol: 

If i read it correctly? I thought the article made mention of encroaching development, and farming? I just assumed that was why you made mention of human development, and jobs verses the beetles.

I just hope these tiger beetles don't go extinct.  It's very sad there are only a few hundred left.  

Tony, has the zoo tried to breed these beetles in captivity? Is it even possible to replicate there habitat?


----------



## Zephyr (Jan 5, 2011)

Why doesn't someone try to captive breed the beetle?

I believe many different types of aquarium fish which have long since gone extinct in the wild are thriving in captivity due to their popularity in the fishkeeping hobby (I know redtailed sharks are extinct in the wild for a fact; I think several species of livebearer are too). If we get them going in captivity, even though the habitat will be gone, at least the beetles won't be. I'm sure zoogoers (or hobbyists) would love seeing a batch of beetles going after live prey; at least I would. lol


----------



## PhilinYuma (Jan 5, 2011)

Zephyr said:


> Why doesn't someone try to captive breed the beetle?
> 
> I believe many different types of aquarium fish which have long since gone extinct in the wild are thriving in captivity due to their popularity in the fishkeeping hobby (I know redtailed sharks are extinct in the wild for a fact; I think several species of livebearer are too). If we get them going in captivity, even though the habitat will be gone, at least the beetles won't be. I'm sure zoogoers (or hobbyists) would love seeing a batch of beetles going after live prey; at least I would. lol


They probably could, but there are problems with this. You're quite right about tropical fish of course, and African rift lake cichlids are a prime example. They have been maintained in US aquaria after their habitat was destroyed by the release of Tilapia spp (deliberately, by a wild life agent!), but of course, the gene pool is so tiny that they will begin to deteriorate from inbreeding. This has already happened with the wild population of cheetahs in Kenya and elsewhere. it also happens, I suspect, with mantids. Yen saw, whose site is an education on mantis culture, described the difference in yield from his U.S. and a single imported ghost ooth. He wondered about humidity, and he has to be partly right, but i wonder whether the German ooth was from a strain more recently imported from the wild. Look at those pathetic, inbred, wingless/flightless mels and hydei! Interbred and lacking in both fecundity and personality!

Was that a good rant? I hope so!


----------



## Zephyr (Jan 7, 2011)

PhilinYuma said:


> They probably could, but there are problems with this. You're quite right about tropical fish of course, and African rift lake cichlids are a prime example. They have been maintained in US aquaria after their habitat was destroyed by the release of Tilapia spp (deliberately, by a wild life agent!), but of course, the gene pool is so tiny that they will begin to deteriorate from inbreeding. This has already happened with the wild population of cheetahs in Kenya and elsewhere. it also happens, I suspect, with mantids. Yen saw, whose site is an education on mantis culture, described the difference in yield from his U.S. and a single imported ghost ooth. He wondered about humidity, and he has to be partly right, but i wonder whether the German ooth was from a strain more recently imported from the wild. Look at those pathetic, inbred, wingless/flightless mels and hydei! Interbred and lacking in both fecundity and personality!
> 
> Was that a good rant? I hope so!


Generally, I do agree that inbreeding is a bad thing, but I was told by someone that inbreeding in insects actually increases genetic strength. It had something to do with the difference between how their chromosomes are shared versus how they are in humans. Hence why with some insects, particularly roaches, which are closely related to mantids, you can keep a culture going ad infinitum from a small pool of original stock. Coincidentally, inbreeding is a natural part of wild "founding event" processes.

There's also that lovely aspect of mixing strains even of the same species. If Mantis species x is from, say, California, and another Mantis species x is from, say, Kansas, if you breed those two, you could be mixing two very different ends of the same spectrum. We don't know as much as we think we do about speciation; Where do we draw the line? When two individuals can't mate? Can't produce offspring? Can't produce fertile offspring? Have a noticeably different genetic code than that of another surveyed selection? The definition changes depending on where you look. To draw on the roach aspect again, a survey involving nucleotide sequencing was done on the "American" cockroaches in New York city. From the results of the survey, it was found that the DNA of the population there was different than that of the DNA of "American" cockroaches living elsewhere. This one little population had changed on a genetic scale from other populations since it had arrived. Is it a new species? Depends on who you ask. There are more mechanisms involved here than can be haphazardly observed. Physical structures, isolation, and genetics are all important in declaring speciation, with a lot of the focus nowadays being on the last of the three.

There's my little rant, sorry if I swayed a little off topic. lol


----------



## PhilinYuma (Jan 7, 2011)

I always find your posts interesting, Zephyr, and respect the fact that you care for insects rather than just "mantis pets". I still remember, for example that you made a most useful post about the survival of Chinese mantids when not confined to a cage.

I agree that captive raising of an endangered species against the time that it can be released again, as I think was done with the black footed ferret is much better than just letting them go extinct. I'm not sure where you heard that insects are genetically strengthened by inbreeding, though. You must have observed some of the strategies that insects adopt to prevent this. All of the ant colonies in a given area swarm at the same time so that the alleles can mate with partners from different nests and male mantids tend to mature before their sisters and fly off to mate with females that are not necessarily kin. I don't think that genes of eukaryotes are dramatically different from each other in their properties, particularly in this respect.

Everyone, I think, agrees that the species concept is not set in stone, but the BSC does work pretty well for sexually reproducing, extant organisms and was useful in forming the view that the mosquitoes found in the London Underground, thought to be Culex pipiens, are a new species, C. molestus ( they molest us!), because they can't interbreed.

I don't know about the New York roaches. Can they interbreed with the dominant strain? Their situation appears to be similar to that of the mosquitoes.

Wow, I just checked, and we almost went a tiny bit off topic, there!


----------



## Zephyr (Jan 8, 2011)

Ah, just to clarify, my friend was referencing an population dynamics theory.

With many of the species of insect we have in the various hobbies today, the starting members had to be inbred with each other just to keep each species going. What my friend says is that this inbreeding does encourage bad, non-disease resistant genes, and thus these members die off early, leaving the healthy members to continue on. Since insects produce more young per egg case and more rapidly, than say, reptiles, and since the birth-to-death time is often small compared to animals like reptiles, this has an overall positive effect, encouraging better genes by simple survival. Just a theory.

CB for the win.


----------



## batsofchaos (Jan 8, 2011)

Zephyr said:


> Ah, just to clarify, my friend was referencing an population dynamics theory.
> 
> With many of the species of insect we have in the various hobbies today, the starting members had to be inbred with each other just to keep each species going. What my friend says is that this inbreeding does encourage bad, non-disease resistant genes, and thus these members die off early, leaving the healthy members to continue on. Since insects produce more young per egg case and more rapidly, than say, reptiles, and since the birth-to-death time is often small compared to animals like reptiles, this has an overall positive effect, encouraging better genes by simple survival. Just a theory.
> 
> CB for the win.


Whoever told you this is definitely wrong because basically the opposite of the theory is true. Genetic defects are almost exclusively recessive traits. The bad traits don't show up and die off right away leaving you with a strong culture; they spread throughout the entire culture, giving all members the genetic proclivity to pass on the defect. The end result is a culture that cannot sustain itself, because all offspring inherits unhealthy recessive traits from its inbred parents.

A great example of this would be Fumarase syndrome, which is also referred to as Polygamist's Downs. Fumarase is exceptionally rare, except in Colorado City, AZ, amongst the FLDS, a polygamist off-shoot of Mormonism, where it's been inbred into the population to the point where most of their children are born with the disorder.

But I digress, we're talking about insect cultures. Insects are on the whole very simple genetically speaking, so recessive traits and birth defects tend to be much more severe. As a result the trouble caused by inbreeding is greatly mitigated. Cultures could probably do with an introductions of fresh genetic material every once in a while, but on the whole it's largely unimportant. The inbreeding is not, however, a benefit to the strength of the culture.


----------



## Orin (Jan 13, 2011)

Nearly everyone reading this is missing is a critical fact. This isn't a species being saved. _Cicindela nevadica _is not a rare beetle, this is all being done to save a subspecies: _C. nevadica lincolniana_.


----------



## hibiscusmile (Jan 14, 2011)

I agree with bats! Inbreeding and the bad effects are what we see in all amimals and insects and humans today. I am by no means a scientist, but the results speak for them selves.


----------

