A Question About The Tsetse

Zirantun

Banned
Do they serve any other purpose than to make Africa a shithole? I was trying to look into their ecology, and all I could find were some probably very useful college papers on them that I would have to pay to get access to.


Do they have an important role in Africa's ecology? If so, what is it? What would be the ecological consequences of their extinction, besides the probable development of agriculture in Africa?
 
Do they serve any other purpose than to make Africa a shithole? I was trying to look into their ecology, and all I could find were some probably very useful college papers on them that I would have to pay to get access to.


Do they have an important role in Africa's ecology? If so, what is it? What would be the ecological consequences of their extinction, besides the probable development of agriculture in Africa?

Less natural habitat and wildlife, because without portions of Africa being difficult, you'll get more herding/farming/civilization there much sooner.
 
The purpose of any organism is to propagate itself. Some are 'useful' to the ecology in that other organisms benefit from them thriving, and in the case of the tsetse fly insectivorous animals like birds and bats will eat them.

I do not know of any ecological purpose the disease they carry serves, but depending on when it (or it's host) goes extinct their extinction will create butterflies affecting the evolution of all African mammals, including humans.
 

Zirantun

Banned
Well, I'm thinking some time relatively recently, like maybe Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene. It would be really nice to be able to read that paper. I HATE academia.


A decrease in animals that feed on them could see a lot of butterflies. When I was on the Speculative Evolution forums I started a thread about future North American biomes given the presence and prevalence of a number of introduced species. The Emerald Ash Borer stands to radically alter woodland biomes, as many species of insects that feed a number of birds that in turn feed a number of reptiles and small mammals stand to either disappear or decrease drastically in distribution if there are no more ash trees.


So, what are some of the predators of the Tsetse?


EDIT: According to this http://http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/p5444e/p5444e01.htm, they have very few actual predators. I looked up the ecological role of some of the three listed, and while all three include a variety of different species, the species that I have read about so far have very varied diets and I think would fair relatively well without the Tsetse. So from what I can tell, they don't play an essential part in the food web. They're just highly specialized to make everyone in Africa miserable. So their extinction would almost certainly result in the development of more advanced forms of agriculture, and probably the domestication of some animals, but also, probably the more successful radiation of African mammals during wetter periods of the Sahara.
 
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So their extinction would almost certainly result in the development of more advanced forms of agriculture, and probably the domestication of some animals, but also, probably the more successful radiation of African mammals during wetter periods of the Sahara.

This might make some North African/Eurasian species more competitive against some kinds of sub-saharan species. Aurochs, for example, could potentially spread further pre-domestication without sleeping sickness acting as a barrier. Don't know how well they'd compete against Cape Buffalo, though.
 
This might make some North African/Eurasian species more competitive against some kinds of sub-saharan species. Aurochs, for example, could potentially spread further pre-domestication without sleeping sickness acting as a barrier. Don't know how well they'd compete against Cape Buffalo, though.

Not particularly well, I'd say. The Cape Buffalo is better suited to the climate of Africa in general, so the Aurochs would have difficulty getting established away from the Nile in the first place. Its more docile nature would make it a favored target for local human hunters--so it would get killed off more often than Cape Buffalo before domestication.
 

Zirantun

Banned
Its more docile nature would make it a favored target for local human hunters--so it would get killed off more often than Cape Buffalo before domestication.


On what do you base your assertion that the aurochs was a more "docile" animal than the Cape Buffalo? Because last I checked, they were extinct before their behavior was well recorded.
 
On what do you base your assertion that the aurochs was a more "docile" animal than the Cape Buffalo? Because last I checked, they were extinct before their behavior was well recorded.

Admittedly, Wikipedia:

Historical descriptions, like Caesar’s De Bello Gallico or Schneeberger, tell that aurochs were swift and fast, and could be very aggressive. According to Schneeberger, aurochs were not concerned when a man approached. But, teased or hunted, an aurochs could get very aggressive and dangerous, and throw the teasing person into the air, as he described in a 1602 letter to Gesner.[8]

So, still dangerous to hunt, but overall, Aurochs seem less violent than Cape Buffalo. They ought to be--one was domesticated, the other wasn't, after all.
 

Zirantun

Banned
So, still dangerous to hunt, but overall, Aurochs seem less violent than Cape Buffalo. They ought to be--one was domesticated, the other wasn't, after all.


That kinda sounds Diamondian. We already had a professional biologist take apart that aspect of his theory on these forums as well. I think it's very unfair to assume that just because one was domesticated and the other wasn't, that one was less violent or of better temperament. We have very scant records of their behavior, and even what records we have are after thousands of years of interaction with sizable human populations, a kind of interaction which has been absent in the history of the Cape Buffalo until relatively recently.


Nilgai are very calm and they even regularly have twins, which makes them ideal domesticates, yet they were also never properly domesticated and are only recently beginning to pop up on farms. Which begs the question as I asked in another thread: why the gaur and not the nilgai?


Anyways, that's kind of off subject. Do we think that some African ungulates would be able to more successfully radiate during the Green Sahara period, and perhaps invade Eurasia via the Levant? Or am I fishing here...
 
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