Effects of Invasive Species
An additional factor contributing to the status of the Devils River Minnow is the introduction of foreign species. Some introduced tropical and game species now compete with the Devils River Minnow for food and spatial resources. Several nonnative species of catfish, cichlids, and bass have begun to reduce the minnow species’ numbers by feeding on both the minnows themselves and their main diet of algae and microorganisms. Loricariid catfish in particular have established large populations in the Texan habitats of the Devils River Minnow and are steadily consuming most of the available food. Largemouth bass also prey on the species’ juveniles during winter months, therefore reducing the amount of reproductively mature individuals. With the number of breeding individuals dwindling, the population is unable to replenish every season, leading to an even more rapid decline. The abundance of the Devils River Minnow tends to fluctuate in accordance with the populations of their competitive and predator species . The Devils River Minnow population is visibly diminishing, but conservation efforts are being implemented in order to curtail this decline.
Read more about this topic: Devil's River Minnow
Famous quotes containing the words effects of, effects, invasive and/or species:
“Oh that my Pow’r to Saving were confin’d:
Why am I forc’d, like Heav’n, against my mind,
To make Examples of another Kind?
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“Consider what effects which might conceivably have practical bearings we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“The frequency of personal questions grows in direct proportion to your increasing girth. . . . No one would ask a man such a personally invasive question as “Is your wife having natural childbirth or is she planning to be knocked out?” But someone might ask that of you. No matter how much you wish for privacy, your pregnancy is a public event to which everyone feels invited.”
—Jean Marzollo (20th century)
“There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)