Talk:Caulerpa taxifolia

Information

Are you sure you have the right article? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 16:32, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Untitled

There is a couple of hypothesis of where this dangerous strain originated from. I haven't read too deep into it, so I restrained to add this information on the front article, but believe it need to be mentioned somehow, if someone more competent can spare a second.

I think one of them was it was havested from some sea and assisted to breed faster. I am not sure this make sense though. I am spectical because I can't understand why it never spread before man interfered, if it had always existed in the water. May be I misread something or I am nuturally a moron and unable to synthesis some biological aspect of the literature.

The second hypothsis was mutation when man started breeding it in the cold ponds. Whether the mutation was induced by man or just occured naturally, I have no clue. This hypothesis seem more solid, as that explain the lack of natural enemies. The change was outside its natural environment and therefore didn't give its predactor a chance to evolve.

I can't remember the other stuff of head. One more thing that would improve this introduction part of this article is to move up or down the mentioning of the strain to where the detail of this specific stain start. For example, is it only this specific strain that produce one very potent toxin or is this common with all its sister strain? gathima 15:10, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

they need to make slug wet suits so they can get to work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.177.93.235 (talk) 04:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Should rename and rewrite "Invasive Species" section

There are no citations for ANY claims of ecological harm, (one actually references Alan Alda) though there are citations for claims to the opposite (of beneficial ecological effects). If none of the "harm" claims can be verified, I think the section should be renamed "Beneficial Non-native Species" and be re-written accordingly. Of course, if some verifiable claims of economic harm were be added, then it should be renamed "Pest Status" or something similar, and re-written accordingly.

All information without citations will be removed at some point after 10/10/2011. If no verifiable claims of ecological or economic harm have been made, the title of the subsection "invasive species" will be renamed.72.152.233.97 (talk) 22:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Since no verifiable citations were added, the article was re-written to reflect current scientific findings.Pinus jeffreyi (talk) 20:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Is that fat museum curator from Monaco writing this crap? Fine, keep saying it's a happy happy plant. http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/biodiversity/invasive/weeds/weeddetails.pl?taxon_id=67619 http://www.environment.gov.au/resource/eradicating-and-preventing-spread-invasive-alga-caulerpa-taxifolia-nsw Nope, no papers anywhere saying it's bad... I'll just leave this cached page here... nothing to see... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rMPVefrf08UJ:https://pure.abdn.ac.uk:8443/ws/files/54212538/2015_Aquatic_Invasions_Aplikioti_et_al..pdf+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Bet that ended up saying the algae gave hummers too, that's how great it is. And the animals love it... The fish have bad body image, so that's why they're starving... No no, algae is not toxic at all... https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/research-suggests-marine-invasive-species-benefit-from-rising-co2-levels Zero research says... oh dropped another one... So clumsy... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277921319_A_tale_of_two_invaders_divergent_spreading_kinetics_of_the_alien_green_algae_Caulerpa_taxifolia_and_Caulerpa_cylindracea I'll admit, there were a few that almost agreed with you... As long as you were taking about the Indian ocean. Its native habitat. But we are not talking about its native range, but where it is an invasive species. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.107.138.23 (talk) 10:50, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

So...

This article on Caulerpa taxifolia says that C. taxifolia is the largest unicellular organism. The article on Syringammina fragilissima says S. fragilissima is the largest single-celled organism.

Care to explain? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Widgetdog (talk • contribs) 21:17, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Updates/Citations Needed

I'm looking to update/find citations needed to increase the strength of this article and possibly add new sections and information. Perhaps adding/reorganizing the sections so that there is a section for Distribution (Native Habitat-Indian Ocean-and Nonnative Habitat-locations including the Mediterranean Sea, California, and other locations across the world)? Then discuss its physical description, reproduction mechanism, and invasive qualities uderneath the section "Description". MarineMermaidSar (talk) 20:44, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

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Harmful as an invasive species? (If so, that's the opposite of what's stated in the article)

I've been under the impression that this "killer algae" is harmful where it is an invasive species, smothering local marine life and whatnot. This article, however, seems to refute that view, and propose that Caulerpa taxifolia does good where it is introduced, citing a couple of 1990's studies. However, a quick search just now discovered info like this:

"Caulerpa taxifolia is an invasive alga that is causing serious environmental problems in the Mediterranean Sea." -- Center for Invasive Species Research, University of California Riverside [1]

It's clear that a particular cold-water-tolerant Mediterranean strain is highly invasive, but not immediately clear as to how the severity of the harm it causes, only that it alarms people. Anyone know more: is this article misstating the case in suggesting that there is no big problem? --Tsavage (talk) 19:10, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

• @Tsavage: I had the same concern. It’s clear from reading both the article and the comments above that this text was subjected to some “sanitizing” meant to uphold the notion that this is not a concerning invasive species outside its original range, likely helped by the lack of soures it had previously. It should be easy to overhaul the whole thing to make it both well written (sources and also structure and prose) and accurate (saying f.i. that no, it’s not doing the Mediterranean any good, even though it eats human poop — neither should be there). Tuvalkin (talk) 10:04, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin:: OK. I came to this article wanting to find out about the invasiveness! I have no knowledge in this area, and was hoping that someone who did could do at least a basic quick clean-up. In any case, I'll start by inline tagged unsourced statements, and removing anything that's unsourced and not easily verified by search, that makes significant claims. --Tsavage (talk) 21:32, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Full rewrite May 2021

@Tsavage: @Tuvalkin: (and even you from 2017, @MarineMermaidSar:) Hey there. I, too happened across this article (via the Jacques Cousteau page) and somehow it just grabbed me as just being an all-around sucky, disappointing article (lack of citations, bad organization, bias on both sides, and a general lack of facts) and I decided to immerse myself in research for four hours to make it what I wished it had been when I found it. The cites are probably a mess and there's much more out there (both in the cites I added and stuff that I don't have the energy to pull in right now, and I know nothing about the topic other than what I just learned from four hours of internet research, but here's a takeaway and summary of some editorial choices I made:

• It seems clear that Jacques Cousteau and the Oceanographic Museum were reckless in their handling of the aquarium strain and minimized the problem when it was unclear whether what they had allowed to happen was a major problem or not, which they deserve criticism for but which is outside the scope of this article, but additionally

• On balance, the research seems to show that the strain isn't great but not the ecological disaster that the Guardian's reporting in 1999 appeared to foretell, and
• Meinesz's book characterizing the strain as "Killer Algae", and his rather hostile attitude toward Cousteau and the Museum were, in retrospect, excessive, and do not merit extensive citation in the article.

• All the government sources I found certainly indicate that the invasive strain continues to be perceived as a major ecological problem, which I infer is due to the unavoidable perpetuation of the mostly justified concern that existed in the 90's which has not been reconsidered sufficiently in light of where we are now more than 20 years later. I would certainly say that the government and academic sources which continue to state how damaging this strain is to native species could benefit greatly from specifics about what species are being harmed, where, which do exist but are not as numerous or as dire as one would expect given the level of official concern that appears to continue to be present.
• I opted to remove the citation of what I perceived as a lobbying piece by "Thomas A. Frakes, Technical Consultant" with a financial interest in the aquarium products industry, given that the citation was of his contention that the strain's ability to thrive in polluted environments was supportable by much better references and additionally did NOT support the article's contention that that somehow was relevant to the strain's colonization of the Mediterranean.
• I found nothing supporting the claim that the species name is derived from the yew, but seeing nothing to the contrary, the claim remains (albeit with the citation needed caveat).
• I hope the additional facts I found to include in the description (with citations) are welcome and uncontroversial.

In any case, nearly every sentence in the rewritten article now has a citation, and I hope that any differences people may have with the implied tone of the article will be likewise supported by citations, so people can come away from reading it with the feeling that they are now reasonably informed on the subject, which was certainly not a feeling I had after reading the previous version. Hopefully you find the changes to be an improvement. Cheers. Ataru (talk) 23:16, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

• I gave it a cursory read and it looks good. Thank you! Tuvalkin (talk) 23:41, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
• I gave it a quick read and compared it with the last version -- seems good! On the "killer algae" aspect, it's now easy to gather that there were and are concerns, but after 30+ years, all hell hasn't broken lose (or if so, it's not being reported...) -- that's what the available uncontroversial sources seem to deliver. Thanks for the edit notes, it's a great approach to...collaborative improvement. :) Cheers! --Tsavage (talk) 15:12, 24 May 2021 (UTC)