Ecology and Rhetoric

This post deals with two things that I have absolutely no professional training in. I also haven't surveyed the literature to determine whether this is novel, but I suspect in might be. Why, because of what C.P. Snow called the Two Cultures. These are roughly speaking the sciences and the humanities. I therefore believe that no one has likely considered the relationship between ecology and rhetoric, but I would be happy to be corrected.

The term which I find particularly interesting from a rhetorical point of view is "invasive species." Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them. What interests me about the term in the value set that it appears to incorporate. Specifically, most of us are likely to have the notion that an invasion is a bad thing. (I except certain former officials of the Bush Administration.) Consequently, our knee-jerk reaction to hearing the an invasive species has established itself in a particular locality is probably negative.

Now current theories of speciation, suggest that geographic and/ or reproductive isolation are necessary for a new species to emerge. The late Stephen J. Gould suggested, in fact, that speciation might occur through a process of punctuated equilibrium. What does this mean for ecology? Unless a species never leaves the biome where it evolved by whatever mechanism, it must be invasive at some point. If a newly emerged species is fitter in an evolutionary sense than the parent species, or the species that fill the same niche elsewhere it will spread at the expense of those species.

Now, living in the South, I am well aware of the toll that kudzu lays upon native species. However, the problem with such introductions is not the species itself, but the absence of the controls that have evolved in its native biome.

In the sense that the term is often used, humanity could be considered an invasive species everywhere in the world except for Africa south and east of the great rift system. Now perhaps invasive species carries exactly the appropriate connotation needed for ecology. However, I really think a more appropriate term is "exotic species."