Re: Did Dung Beetles Kill The Mushroom?

Patrick Wilken (patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au)
Fri, 25 Jul 1997 14:26:20 +1000

>This is pretty hard to swallow (as it were). There are scarabs everywhere.
> *Macrocopris symbioticus*, according to the E.B., `lives in the anus of
>the wallaby'. *That's* specialisation for you - it reminds me strongly of
>certain academics I've known - and not the kind of thing that evolves in
>200 years...

I think we are well out on a limb in regard to this list's focus, but just
to be accurate dung beetles were released in Australia by CSIRO to deal
with the millions of cow pats. The result was a huge success and its good
to see a positive introduction of a species to Australia after all the
negative ones (e.g. rabbit, fox, cat, buffulo, pig). Another useful
introduction of a species was type of month introduced as a natural
predator for prickly pear (another introduced species that went out of
control once it was introduced).

ciao, patrick

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Patrick Wilken http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/~patrickw/
Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness
Secretary: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ http://www.phil.vt.edu/ASSC/