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Interesting/Little Known introduced populations

Discussion in 'Wildlife & Nature Conservation' started by birdsandbats, 3 Jan 2018.

  1. vogelcommando

    vogelcommando Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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  2. vogelcommando

    vogelcommando Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I know that introduced Green iguanas are a problen on many Caribbean islands but on Grand Cayman it seems to be realy bad. A culling programm is active and the numbers catched are realy unbelieveble :

    Green iguana culling grand cayman.png
     
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  3. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    The cat is visible so briefly in the video that you really can't tell anything other than that it is small (i.e. not a "black panther") and that the guineafowl were so not frightened by it that they started chasing it.

    Domestic cat seems by far the most likely identity.
     
  4. tetrapod

    tetrapod Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Insane numbers!
     
  5. DesertRhino150

    DesertRhino150 Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Was browsing through pages on the IUCN and saw something that made me do a double-take. The lowland paca is listed as having an extant and introduced population in Algeria. I couldn't find any other information about this apparent introduction on any other sources.

    The IUCN page is included below; curiously only the Cuban introduced range is included on the distribution map:
    IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
     
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  6. Great Argus

    Great Argus Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Interesting, not a species I would have expected for North Africa. Given that IUCN is listing it I assume it's fairly credible, but I'd be very curious about more information on the population!
     
  7. DesertRhino150

    DesertRhino150 Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Another introduced species I hadn't heard of - there is a population of giant eland (Taurotragus derbianus) on Sierra Najasa in Cuba. They were introduced for the purposes of hunting in the 1990s, with at least one reference saying they came from Canada originally. They (or at least signs of them) were observed during a survey in 2001.

    The reference I mention above is included below:
    Biodiversity and conservation of Cuban mammals: past, present, and invasive species
     
  8. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    The Mandarin Duck population in southern California is of course well-known - but I just found out there is population around the Great Salt Lake as well!
     
  9. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    I'm not sure if this is true or not - I hear this refrenced all the time, but eBird actually has an accepted record:

    https://ebird.org/checklist/S62423052

    I would think that if this hybrid was impossible Cornell wouldn't bother creating the option.
     
  10. FBBird

    FBBird Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Accepted or not, it is extremely unlikely. 'Looked more phenotypically Mandarin' -- hardly surprising if it was 100% Mandarin! Mandarin have been bred in captivity in large numbers for two centuries, during which there has been no acceptable record of the species producing a hybrid. All the photographs have shown hormonally compromised Mandarins exhibiting incomplete male plumage. Thus ebird record is likely to refer to such a bird. The suggestion that it might be a back cross is particularly unlikely, given that all Wood Duck hybrids are likely to be infertile.The congeric Carolina Wood Duck has hybridised with many species of both surface feeding and diving ducks.
    I reiterate that Aix galericulata has a different number of chromosomes from all other waterfowl, and is therefore incapable of producing a hybrid.
     
    Last edited: 14 Jan 2020
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  11. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    This will be a typo. The text says the introduced populations are in Cuba and the Lesser Antilles.
     
  12. Great Argus

    Great Argus Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    I disagree, the Ebird database lists an atrocious amount of waterfowl hybrids, and many have no records to show if you select them. I remember putting in quite a few once out of curiosity, and records in the Ebird database were sorely lacking. Only a few hybrids actually had records, usually only a few.
     
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  13. drill

    drill Well-Known Member

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    Common wall lizards in Cincinnati and surrounding areas according to Ohio DNR
     
  14. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Yes, I've heard of this. They are actually most common in and around the zoo (according to my field guide).
     
  15. EsserWarrior

    EsserWarrior Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Give me $15 and I'll bring buckets of bearded dragons to release in Arizona when I visit.
     
  16. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    I know earlier on this thread the Chestnut-fronted Macaw was mentioned as being basically gone in Florida - I did some digging and this does not seem to be the case.

    I was looking to see if I could find out about any established populations of Feral Chickens in the US (outside of the well-known ones in Florida and Hawaii) and found they are common in one town in Alabama and another in Texas.
     
  17. Great Argus

    Great Argus Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    There's a small population in Lincoln, CA as well. They're a bit variable in color, but many of them look a good deal like junglefowl in color. I've seen them myself.
     
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  18. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Just looked into these some more - apparently the population I thought was in Alabama is actually Fitzgerald, Georgia. And also, they aren't Feral Chickens, they are legitimate wild-type Red Junglefowl.
     
  19. DesertRhino150

    DesertRhino150 Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    I have just noticed that around 2012, in order to control the ticks that spread Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, the government of Turkey started to release 'thousands' of helmeted guineafowl.

    Apparently, guineafowl are not as good at stopping ticks as sometimes thought and may actually spread the disease further, as an important nursery for tick nymphs. I am not sure if the species has established but if thousands have indeed been released, then it wouldn't surprise me at all if they did.

    The abstract to a paper on the release can be found below:
    https://www.cell.com/trends/parasitology/pdf/S1471-4922(12)00176-6.pdf
     
  20. vogelcommando

    vogelcommando Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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