Invasion Biology

Monday, October 09, 2006

CORRECTION FOR CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2 of this course states "Australian aborigines arrived with the dingo and Polynesians brought pigs, taro, yams, and rats (as stowaways)" between 1500 and 1800 AD. This is factually incorrect (see below). All these introductions took place well before 1500 AD.

The time of the arrival of the first humans in Australia is uncertain (with widely different dates documented using various methods) but is generally accepted to be between 40 000 and 50 000 years before present. Radiocarbon dating has placed many sites at about 38000 BC (i.e. about 40 000 years before present). Thermoluninescence dated some sites in northern Australia to about 48000 BC (i.e. about 50 000 years before present) (1). The first settlers did not introduce the dingo to Australia (2). The dingo (Canis lupus ssp. dingo) is thought to have been introduced from South-east Asia between 3000 BC and 1000 AD by Austronesian traders (2, 3) during a theorized intensification of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle (1). The earliest dingo fossil evidence in Australia dates from about 1500 BC (i.e. the fossil is about 3 500 years old) (2).

Present Polynesian cultures are thought to have developed from the so-called Lapita culture that spread from New Guinea to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga around 1600-1200 BC (4). This ancestral Polynesian culture had pigs, dogs and chickens which they took with them. Crops included taro and yams. The Polynesian rat was probably involuntarily spread by the Lapita peoples (5).

References

(1) Wikipedia contributors. Indigenous Australians [Internet]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; Updated 2006 Oct. 5, 04:07 UTC [cited 2006 Oct. 5]. Avaliable from: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indigenous_Australians&oldid=79588443.

(2) Wikipedia contributors. Dingo [Internet]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; Updated 2006 Oct. 2, 15:04 UTC [cited 2006 Oct. 5]. Avaliable from: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dingo&oldid=79048433.

(3) Corbett, L.K. Canis lupus ssp. dingo [Internet]. IUCN 2006, 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species <http://www.iucnredlist.org/>; Updated 2004 [cited 2006 Oct. 5]. Available from: http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/41585/all.

(4) Wikipedia contributors. Polynesia [Internet]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; Updated 2006 Oct. 3, 18:50 UTC [cited 2006 Oct. 6]. Avaliable from: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polynesia&oldid=79297561.

(5) Wikipedia contributors. Lapita [Internet]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; Updated 2006 Sept. 18, 08:07 UTC [cited 2006 Oct. 6]. Avaliable from: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lapita&oldid=76374895.

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