A Rocha USA Blog

By John Humphreys

I subscribe to the BRILLIANT “Parasite of the Day” web page.

As the organizers put it – “The United Nations declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. In celebration of the enormous diversity of parasites and to highlight their importance, we created this blog, which showcased a species of parasite every day. Now that 2010 is over, we will continue to add more parasites from time to time.”

All the way through 2010, all of us subscribers were entertained, educated and disgusted in equal measure by the extraordinary variety of organisms which make their living off other creatures.
Some are more-or-less tolerable for the host: the mistletoe, which all of us love to kiss under, is not often lethal to the tree it grows on and the ubiquitous head louse is merely an irritation to us, although has school districts and parents up in arms when they see it.

Some are genuinely spectacular – like the largest flower in the world, sported by the rainforest parasite Rafflesia arnoldii. Others are actually parasitoids rather than parasites because, simply, they always kill their host – the newly discovered and very worrying “white nose syndrome”, a fungus that chokes hibernating bats, is a case in point.

Then there are the plutocrats of the parasite world – the hyperparasites, who parasitize parasites themselves. An example is the tiny wasp Caenacis inflexa, which attacks other wasps like Eurytoma rosae and Glyphomerus stigma…which themselves are parasitic on  the “gall wasp” Diplolepis rosae…the ecology of plant galls is endlessly fascinating.

Of course, there are some genuinely terrifying creatures like the nightmare-inducing tongue-eating louse and the ghastly crab-controlling barnacle.

Now, many of these beasts…and plants…and fungi…have exquisitely exacting tastes. They may only target one single organism to live off. While this type of deal must have some advantages for the parasite, there is one enormous downside: your host dies out, you die out.

Which leads me to the tick, Ixodes neuquensis. It is only found on a gorgeous little opossum-like creature, the (confusingly named) ‘mountain monkey’ Dromiciops gliroides. This charming little thing lives in South America and its forest home is being torn down.
When it goes, when it is gone forever, and two things will happen.

Firstly, we will never see it alive again. Films don’t do the same for me, sorry. It will be gone, and nothing this side of the Second Coming can bring it back.

Secondly, a variety of living creatures dependent on it will join it in oblivion. Not just the tick and other parasites; this marsupial mammal is the only known way that a unique plant –Tristerix corymbosus, a type of mistletoe - can spread its seeds (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromiciops_gliroides and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristerix).

Ironically this mistletoe only parasitizes two cacti. So the whole ecosystem is teetering on the edge of oblivion. As I say ad nauseam, the only way for you and I to do anything about this is to help preserve the forest. And spread the word. Thanks for reading.

Cute, almost gone.

by Robert Campbell

The other day I realized that I have never discovered a new species and felt kind of bad about that. Of course, I knew that already. You usually know when you have discovered a new species. That is not one of those things that you just stumble on. “Oops, I think I discovered a new species. Perhaps I should tell someone. Perhaps I should be more careful where I am stepping.” I have never identified a spider, frog or plant and probably never will. Being a part of the work of A Rocha can make you feel like an inadequate environmentalist, don't you know. I mean, while our brothers and sisters are tromping unexplored forests in Papua New Guinea, I am planting a fall garden in my California backyard.

My fall garden is so very different than my spring and summer garden. In summer she runneth over with green, overcoming her raised-bed boundaries like an adolescent whose arms are bigger than she realizes. Fall is much simpler, much tidier. The beds have been cleaned of the frost-killed summer veg, packed down with compost mixed together from yard and kitchen scraps, chicken droppings and the left overs from my neighbor's horse corral. My nine beautiful boxes shine with fresh yellow straw and just a few, very precisely placed fall plantings: cabbage, broccoli, red spotted heirloom romaine, beets, and some amazing torpedo onion sprouts that my neighbor swears will grow better in our micro-climate than any bulbs I could buy at the store.

 Years ago I planted standard red onion bulbs purchased in bulk at a locally owned hardware store. They started out as these gorgeous little baby onions, so tender and in need of my fatherly care. I put them to bed at a good time and nurtured them kindly as they rested for the winter, giving them a drink whenever they cried about being thirsty. And in the spring I harvested...flowers, not onions. They were not even an undiscovered flower, just onion flowers. Having provided the neighborhood with a good laugh at my expense, I was let in on the secret: torpedo onion starts, rather than bulbs for planting.

 Just a few days ago I got an early phone call. Hoping it might be from an A Rocha colleague in need of my species-discovering help, I answered in my most scientific voice. The call wasn’t from Papua New Guinea. It was, however, a neighbor informing me of the time and place I could acquire THE onions. I headed out to the store and returned home with my little package of wet, newspaper-wrapped sprouts. Now in the ground, my starts look pretty good so far. My parenting routine begins again. We'll have to wait until spring before we know if this is the species that will flourish in my neighborhood. But I have it on the best local authority (aka town gossip) that they will.

Why do I care so about such things? My friend and A Rocha founder Peter Harris says this about the work of discovering new species: "We are motivated by our conviction that every species matters because it is part of God’s good creation, whether or not it has obvious value for humans…When a species is wiped out...we are removing a member of the choir."

Peter’s words apply to all of us as we seek to live faithfully in God's world. I am not a biologist, geologist, ornithologist, or zoologist, and I have never discovered a new species. I am an ordinary local church pastor who is discovering ways in which I can live day to day under the Lordship of Christ for whom, by whom and through whom all things were created and all things hold together—whether frogs and spiders in Papua New Guinea or onions in my backyard.

*Campbell is Pastor of the Santa Margarita Community Church in Santa Margarita, CA