Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Are tuataras special?

I found an article in the New York Times about a cool reptile, the tuatara, which is endemic to New Zealand. Though it looks like a lizard, cladistic analyses have revealed that tuataras are not, in fact, in the same group as lizards and snakes, but rather they are a last surviving member of an ancient group of reptiles. Read the article, and if interested, do a bit of perusing to learn more about tuataras. Based on the article, our class conversations, and your own prior knowledge and values, do you think that a species like the tuatara should receive special priority in terms of conservations efforts? Why or why not?

14 comments:

  1. Although I still have an issue with humans deciding what animals are important, and how one thing can “deserve” to live more than another, I see the value in prioritizing the tuatara because it is a connection to our past unlike anything else. We still have a lot to learn about evolution, and having a live animal that connects us to the past could be important in research. The article mentions that researchers are looking into tuataras to improve dental implants. Even if this is all tuataras can provide for us, it goes to show how answers to present day problems can be found in situations like this, which may lead to more people contributing to protection of endangered species.

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  2. Tuatara lizards should receive attention from conservation efforts, however there are many other endemic species all across the world that deserve priority as well. Tuataras are special and can act as a bridge to our past as tuatara organs and traits display the hallmarks of being closer to the evolutionary baseline than comparable structures in other animals. The tuatara also has a third eye at the top of its skull, a unique trait to the species. Saving the tuatara can help us further understand Earth's history and maintain this unique, endemic species. However, attention shouldn't be completely shifted from other important efforts to do so.

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  3. I do in fact believe that tuatara's are special. They connect to our past and teach us alot about evolution which is important in learning about anything in science. Tuataras are amazing, living in freezing weather its amazing what they can do. They have unique traits like the third eye, it is unlike anything i have ever heard of. I find tuataras fascinating. It is amazing that they can contribute to better dental care, however, i don't think that all attention should be put on them, there are still so many other species that are in need.

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  4. I think the tuataras are really cool! They have such an interesting history and give us so much information about the past. I loved learning about their third eye. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to try and protect them more than other animals. I think we as humans get ourselves all tangles up because we do things that hurt species and then try and save them simultaneously when it would really be much easier just to stop the things we do.
    How important are the tuataras to the ecosystem at large? If they play a large role, we should definitely be trying to protect them. But if they effect the environment very little, then wouldn’t it be more beneficial to try and support animals like wolves, who play an integral part to their surroundings?

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  5. The tuatara seems to be a very important and unique species alive today -- one that could be useful for research and other practical reasons. Described as a “living fossil”, the tuatara can provide us with knowledge and a deeper understanding of different organisms’ evolutions and even our own. Since the tuatara can help with dental implant improvements and expand our knowledge of evolution and living beings, I do think it should receive special priority. Although I do not think humans should have the right to choose which organisms are more valuable than others and which should receive prioritized conservation, I do think that with the knowledge of how useful and special the tuatara is, special efforts should be put in place to help protect this species.

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  6. I believe that tuataras do deserve special conservation efforts. As others have stated, it is difficult to say whether they deserve more or less protection than other species. However, as was shown in the article tuataras are "living fossils" this could be very helpful in our further understanding of evolution and other extinct species. We can see through fossil records the similarities of tuataras to other species who previously lived; now having a living species to represent that group could help us further understand those fossils and previous life. In addition to their unique traits that cannot be found in any other known species living today there are other factors that make them worthy of conservation. By this I mean that tuataras have been around for a very long time, are endemic to New Zealand, and at one point in time were thriving before people arrived. Along with people came invasive species such as rats, pigs, dogs, cats and goats which have disrupted the tuatara’s fragile habitat. These invasive species have also caused harm to many other endemic species in New Zealand which also deserve protection. Conservation of tuataras could be extended to other species by managing the invasive species and protecting the habitats of native species. The reason I think they deserve special conservation is because they already had a fragile and lengthy process in which they produce offspring which has been disrupted by introduced species.
    Tuatara’s are very fascinating and we should do more research on how they can be used as a link to the past. In connection to our study of cladograms, tuatara’s could be a very important resource to fill in blanks and develop more fully our current knowledge of extinct species similar to the tuatara. It is important to protect tuataras and all species from the damage we have caused to their habitats. Past protecting them from us and our impacts that is more difficult to examine because it is natural for species to go extinct eventually and I am not sure if humans should have a say in making sure that does not happen unless we are the ones causing the problem (which in most cases we are).

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  7. I believe that a species like the tuatara should be given help to conserve the group, but I also don't see why we can't make sure that every species doesn't go extinct. I don't think there should be priority over which animals we decide to save because it's really not our job to control what lives and what dies on this planet. Naturally, extinctions happen and there's nothing we can really do about it in a long-term situation (billions of years from now). However, if the extinction of tuatara would effect the environment of New Zealand drastiaclly, then I would set priority to saving them. The tuataras are living fossils, which are pretty rare and it's nice to be able to research and learn from them, but as of 2010, there were around 50,000 of them. So yes, they do have interesting jaws and have a unique way of living, which allows them to reproduce at the age of 80, and that can help us improve our dental implants and understand how they've been able to stay alive, but there are other species that need more priority like the Northern White Rhinoceros (10), Baiji dolphins (< 20), and other endangered species with less than at least one thousand of them.

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  8. Tuataras should indeed be conserved as a species, not just for the sake of protecting a vanishing life form , but because it is the last of an ancient group of reptiles and could represent vast leaps in the field of paleontology and the studies of prehistoric biodiversity. Although it may seem cruel and unfair to say that this species deserves to be protected more than others, it should come as no surprise that not every endangered species can feasibly be saved by human efforts. Although research shows that at least 139 species have had their homes destroyed by human invasion...

    http://www.konicaminolta.com/kids/endangered_animals/library/cause/home.html

    ...those animals may have stood in the way of 9.8 million people in need of assisted living (as of 2010).

    Thus, it is morally difficult to say which species may live and which may die, but the tuatara is on that list of animals that deserve to be specially monitored and protected.

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  9. It is not our natural right, and it will never be our natural right, to choose what animals live and what animals die, but, with that being said, I think it is only inevitable that someone, at some point will make that decision, so I believe it is important for humans provide help in the best, most educated ways we can. It is a huge responsibility to be faced with, to be able to decide what species deserve special conservation and those that don’t, but I don’t think we should ignore this job simply because it may be unfair to other species. The tutara, unlike any reptile, let alone any vertebrate alive today, can provide us with insight into evolution and species that have gone extinct. The fact that it has undergone very few changes, other than those that are biological and physiological, means that is it extremely close to the evolutionary baseline and a, “living fossil”. The tutara’s reproduction process is already a long one and easily threatened by other animals, which if it were to be disrupted, would decrease already low tutara populations. I don’t think that providing tutara’s with special conservation help would drastically take away from any other conservation effort, and it should be a high priority amongst researches and conservationists. Not only could the tutara link us to the past and provide us with new, ground breaking knowledge, it could provide medical insights and the privilege of being able to observe such an amazing, unique animal.

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  10. Like most other people have already said, I don’t think it’s necessarily right to place one species “above” another. I think that there should be more conservation efforts towards protecting the tuatara but there also should be just as many toward protecting other endangered or threatened animals. The tuatara is an incredibly unique species because of the few changes it has gone through evolutionarily, which can help us understand the fossils of species that are no longer around. It’s also pretty cool that tuatara’s are a resource in deciding how to better benefit dental implants. While I don’t think that the tuatara’s unique factors make it more “worthy” of conservation than another endangered species, I do believe that humans should do what they can to protect the tuatara from extinction, especially because human impact has been a main factor in why they are endangered in the first place.

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  11. I do indeed think that Tuataras should be apart of our conversations. I think its fascinating looking at our evolution.It will not only help us provide new information about the past and future but explore the beauty of this new creature. Its unreal how they have a third eye and can be in freezing weather, its unlike any species I've heard about. Although they are important to converse about there are many other species that are also worth having conversations about.

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  12. I believe that species like the tuatara should receive specials priority in conservation efforts due to the fact that they can help bridge the gap between the past and the present, and they also hold a certain importance to understanding evolution. They are described as “living fossils” because their basic skeletal layout and skull shape is almost identical to the tuatara fossils that date back hundreds of millions of years ago; they even date back to before the rise of the dinosaurs. With this being said, they seem more important than other species to protect. There is a reason why the tuatara, and other species like it, have remained almost unchanged for hundreds of millions of years and it is important to learn all we can from them. Everything about them makes them closer to evolutionary baseline than many animals. Tuataras are a unique species that allows us to better understand evolution in many ways. They are unlike any other species of reptile, and I believe that says a lot on their evolutionary development. They need to receive special priority in conservation efforts because they are an endemic species that relies on a certain type of ecosystem to survive, and if the littlest thing is changed such as the introduction of rats, their existence could be jeopardized and the world would lose an incredible species that has been virtually untouched by evolution for millions of years.

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  13. I do have an issue with humans deciding whether or not an animal is important enough to be preserved. It is not our job, although many humans seem to think it so, to decide who should live and who should be allowed to perish. In Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, I think he explains this idea very well, stating that “The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it,” (Quinn 72). This idea that humans rule the world and get to make decision for it is a huge flaw in our nature. It is important to preserve all species, not just the ones that we see as ecologically interesting or significant. Prairie dogs have only 2% of their original total population, but are still not listed as an endangered species, because compared to other animals they still have a huge population. The black footed ferret, an extremely endangered ferret which mainly feeds on prairie dogs, is suffering from the lack of prey and there isn’t anything that we can do until we bring back up the prairie dog populations. I think this is a perfect example of how everything is connected, and that in order to maintain one species we must maintain the rest of them, even if they do not seem as interesting as other species. It is not our place to decide who deserves to be protected and who doesn’t, and we should protect our wild spaces equally in order to save as many species as possible, not just the exciting ones.
    Citation
    Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael. New York: Bantam Books, 1995. Print

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  14. The article describes the tuatara as an amazing being… a “so-called fossil” and unlike “any other vertebrate alive today”. The tuataras’ similarity to some of the primitive organisms in the evolutionary tree as well as its interesting hypermutability along with many other distinctive features also make it exceptional. The slow pace of tuatara repopulation, however, makes the species very difficult to maintain, despite their exceptionality, resilience, and long-life. These are reasons to preserve the tuatara ahead of other organisms. I believe that all life has the right to live and exist and humans made a mistake in compromises that right for many species. But what’s done is done, and we cannot change that some organisms will go extinct, and that we have the power to control that. With great power comes great responsibility, and so I think that in terms of evolutionary uniqueness and scientific research, the tuatara is one of the most valuable species on the face of the earth. When humans begin to make the difficult choices that come with the progression of climate change and the sixth mass extinction, the tuatara should be at the top of the preservation list.

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