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Article: Insects toxic to CP's...

Second link doesn't work.

But the article makes sense, we use cadmium in many things, and its no surprise that insects are full of it now after decades of exposure... another sad day in the world of CP's...

And ironic, death by its own sword :(
 
Funny. I thought copper was generally phytotoxic and would have expected it to have a greater effect than cadmium. Where's the cadmium being introduced into the environment? Used batteries?
 
So....should I stop letting my plants eat?!? ???
 
I would imagine our homegrown feeders or store bought crickets, roaches, etc are safe. Our Terrarium animals also eat these as it's not great to use wild caught insects since you've no idea how healthy or unhealthy the prey item is, what it's been eating or where. However plants in the wild eat whatever stumbles their way and is unlucky enough to fall in.

The article said the Cadmium is from fertilizer run off, industrial pollutants, metal powder coatings and so on.




WWGD
(What Would Glenn Do?)
panic.jpg


Sounds a little bit like a liberal plot to destroy the honest American pollution business if you ask me.
I imagine Some Anarcho-communist college professors got together in a secret cabal of Marxist bankers hiding under Washington and wrote up this report.
Let's go to the chalkboard!


I'm had too much FOX for today! LOL :D
 
That was an excellent article, but I'm keeping in mind that it's a theory and could be of minimal impact, or it could be much more than that. They have no idea.

Notice their careful usage of the words "may be" and "potential" in the articles.
 
"Green and Moody fed contaminated house fly maggots to a group of endangered white-topped pitcher plants (Sarracenia leucophylla) and found that the cadmium accumulated in the plants' stems in a way that can be toxic and disrupt growth. Copper intake, however, did not appear to cause any toxic effects. The findings emphasize the importance of limiting carnivorous plants' exposure to cadmium, say the authors."

One issue I have with studies like this, begs the very question of just what did the researchers expect cadmium and other heavy metals to do?
I cannot think of a single living system that benefits from overexposure to them. Why stop at cadmium? Ramp it up to radionuclides -- strontium-90, plutonium-239 -- both found in sediments and the atmosphere since the days of Los Alamos. Also, considering just how remote many stands of carnivorous plants are, what would be the point-source of cadmium or copper contamination? I don't recall ever seeing bags of disposable batteries either in Sabah National Park, the Florida Everglades, or on Chimanta Massif; nor are most insect prey long-lived enough to sufficiently accumulate the metals, save for only under laboratory conditions. Atmospheric cadmium is another factor, and a byproduct of mining, the burning of coal, and some other industries; but outside of that immediate area, contamination -- in several studies -- was considered minimal. Whether that form is even metabolically-available to the plants in question, is unknown. Papers were even published on heavy metal's effect on Sphagnum fuscum and S. girgensohnii, both often used as environmental indicators (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15092464).

We faced a similar issue raising shellfish in estuarine waters some years ago. Just because something is present in trace amounts within a given environment, does not necessarily indicate that the materials are bio-available or are even capable of being accumulated by the organisms. Some plants and animals are more discriminating than others to potential contamination. A good example are mussels versus oysters -- both common, filter-feeding molluscs. Mussels are indiscriminate feeders, while oysters are quite the opposite. Both bivalves, placed side by side within an identical environmental setting, will not equally accumulate materials, including pollutants . . .

Carnivorous plants -- Sarracenia leucophila, in particular -- face a far greater threat from deforestation and poaching than from any meal of cadmium-laced house-fly maggots . . .*


(*) I cannot believe that I wrote that last sentence.
 
very well put BigBella. i guess someone needed more grant funding to continue on with more "important" projects.
 
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I'd have to agree with Bella on that one. Sure, in the lab you can raise the toxicity to dangerous levels, but how long in the real world would it take to get those levels dangerous? If we don't take care of the environment, it could get that way, but it will be years (decades, centuries) to turn some of those remote places in to toxic wastelands. You are more likely to lose a stand of Sarracenia to deforestation and poaching than you are to Cd.
 
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