'Freakosystems' are wild wonders, but also a warning | The Excerpt Dana Taylor, USA TODAY August 22, 2025 at 12:05 AM On a special episode (first released on August 13, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: 'Freakosystems' are novel ecosystems where native and invasive species mix.
- - 'Freakosystems' are wild wonders, but also a warning | The Excerpt
Dana Taylor, USA TODAY August 22, 2025 at 12:05 AM
On a special episode (first released on August 13, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: 'Freakosystems' are novel ecosystems where native and invasive species mix. What do these wild wonders reveal about the future of life on Earth? Corey Tarwater, an ecologist at the University of Wyoming who has been researching Oahu's ecosystems for more than a decade, joins USA TODAY's The Excerpt to share her findings.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello, I'm Dana Taylor, and this is a special episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt. Across the planet, the actions of humans are creating novel ecosystems, which according to the BBC, have been dubbed Freco systems by the daughter of professor of ecology. Freco systems are places where unfamiliar species mix with native species in unexpected ways. Research into the Hawaiian island, Oahu's lush landscape demonstrates how the actions of humans have radically changed the natural world. What do these emerging ecosystems tell us about both the resilience and fragility of life on earth? Here to discuss novel ecosystems is Corey Tarwater, an ecologist at the University of Wyoming who's been researching Oahu's ecosystems for more than a decade. Thanks for joining me, Corey.
Corey Tarwater:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Oahu is filled with non-native plants and animals. Broadly, what are the hallmarks of novel ecosystems?
Corey Tarwater:
Well, it's a couple different things. One, you already hit the nail on the head. You have a mix of native and non-native species in an area that have never been seen before, and this is caused by humans. And so when we think about novel ecosystems, we're not saying that in Earth's history that there weren't new environments. Right. We certainly had disturbance, we certainly had new species. But what makes novel ecosystems different is that they're caused by humans, and that it's happening really rapidly. So you have the set of native and non-native species found in this environment together that have never been together before. They're self-sustaining, meaning we don't a management to maintain these communities. And we also, these communities can't go back to what they were before. So they really cross this sort of threshold in which we can't go back to the historic way that they used to be.
Dana Taylor:
Corey, take us to Hawaii. How much of Oahu's altered landscape was our doing? To what extent of humans shaped ecosystems there?
Corey Tarwater:
In Hawaii in general, since humans have arrived, we've lost about 100 different plant species, and we've lost about 60% of our bird species have all gone extinct since we arrived there. We also see that in addition to the ones that have gone extinct, about 40% of the species on the US threatened and endangered species list are in Hawaii. And this is pretty amazing, given that Hawaii only represents 1% of the land mass of the United States. So we've certainly led to a lot of species being threatened and endangered, and we've led to a lot of extinctions of species for lots of different reasons, right? Because we've introduced a bunch of species there. We've got urbanization, right, we've built up different cities, we have agriculture. So for a whole variety of reasons, we've bought a lot of species to Hawaii and it's led to extinctions.
Dana Taylor:
Are there some species that might be surprising to our listeners that are non-native that are now found on Oahu?
Corey Tarwater:
I remember talking to some locals when I was in Honolulu one time, and I was talking about the non-native birds outside flying around Honolulu, and I said, "What? Those are non-natives." So I think where a lot of people, they look like tropical birds. They are tropical birds, most of them, right? They're colorful, they're fun. It's what we think of it as the tropics. And so I think that probably a lot of the bird species people would not know are non-native birds, and certainly the plants, because we have these huge trees that are non-native all around the urban landscapes. I think a lot of people probably would think that those are native just because they're basically the canopy, right? They're what structured the entire community. So I think most of it would surprise people.
Dana Taylor:
How have novel ecosystems challenged what we think of as natural, as opposed to what we think of as wild?
Corey Tarwater:
Novel ecosystems are certainly what a lot of us are used to. Right. I mean, there's an estimate that about 30 to 40% of our terrestrial land masses is already considered a novel ecosystem. And so I think it's more what we think of as there's pristine, and then there's these novel ecosystems, right, and so we could call them all wild, but they're self-sustaining populations. You see the same type of species interactions. You might see seed dispersal and pollination and a lot of the things that you think of in these pristine habitats. So it's not that they're wild and they're just, right, just a new set of species that are there interacting with each other.
Dana Taylor:
Can you recall a specific moment during your research that illustrates how deeply intertwined non-native species have become in Oahu's ecological systems?
Corey Tarwater:
Yeah, so we have been studying them for the last 10 years now, and we've recorded over 5,000 interactions between plants and birds, and amongst all those interactions, there's not one interaction between the plants and birds that's between native species. They're all non-native. They could be a non-native bird to a native plant or a non-native bird to a non-native plant. But they're, all interactions are novel. They've never been seen before. And so that really just highlights how embedded these non-native species are into the ecosystem.
Dana Taylor:
Non-native birds play a role in sustaining some of the last native plants on Oahu. Can you share more about that discovery and what it says about resilience and adaptation within ecosystems?
Corey Tarwater:
Oh, we've got four key non-native birds that do most of the seed dispersal out on Oahu. So they're the only thing allowed to disperse our native plants. There's no native frugivores left on Oahu to disperse our native plants. And so there's four really critical bird species that serve that entire role for these native species. The challenge is that they're not complete replacements. We have a lot of native fruits that are not getting dispersed because they're too big for these birds to eat. These are small birds that are flying around. They can only eat fruit of a certain size, and so while they do a great job with some of the native plants, they're not the same as the ones that went extinct. So I think that's important to highlight is that, again, we've got seed predators out there, seed dispersers, but it's not going to be a complete replacement of what we've lost.
Dana Taylor:
Hawaii is, of course, lush and teeming with life. As a scientist, how do you personally weigh the wonder of these novel ecosystems with the loss of Hawaii's native diversity?
Corey Tarwater:
Hawaii is fascinating and depressing all at the same time. So we love going out to Hawaii. I enjoy going up to the mountains and seeing the native plant species and being in these really amazingly lush environments. I love the coast, and I think it's fascinated from an ecological perspective of what happens when you have all these species together that have never been together before. How do they interact with each other? What are they doing? How are they surviving? I think it's from an ecological perspective, it's an incredibly fascinating place. From a conservation perspective, it's rough, right? There's people that are incredibly dedicated, working very hard to maintain some of these native plants and these birds and snails and all the different things that are threatened and endangered. So I feel mixed about it. I enjoy it. I think it's beautiful. I love going out there, but it's also, it's tough knowing that these plant species will never be able to make it on their own.
Dana Taylor:
Are there conservationists who advocate for the removal of non-native species? What are your thoughts regarding that approach in general and also specifically on Oahu?
Corey Tarwater:
Currently, a lot of the non-native plants are getting removed, and I think that that's a good thing. A lot of these non-native plants are, they're highly invasive. They're highly detrimental to the landscape, to the native plants. So certainly that's happening, and I think it's a good thing, but I think it's good to figure out the roles of these non-native species to figure out what to target. You certainly don't want to target the non-native birds that are helping promote dispersal of native plants, and you don't need to target the non-native plants that aren't really doing too much harm to the environment. They're kind of more neutral effects on the environment. So really targeting towards these highly invasive species is really where conservation should go, and it's certainly what people focused on, on Oahu and elsewhere.
Dana Taylor:
You've said that Oahu can be seen as a cautionary tale. What's the lesson here?
Corey Tarwater:
Well, the lesson is first trying to not let a bunch of things in, which is a big challenge, right? Humans are really good at moving species around. We changed the land, right, we're changing the climate. And so one thing is just trying to stop things from coming in the first place. And some of our work has shown what plant species are really preferred by these birds, really the ones you should look out for and try to stop from even getting these populations on the landscape. And so I think, yeah, first, having an idea what not to allow to happen. And then I think the other cautionary tale is we need to think about how we want to conserve these novel ecosystems in the future. Do we want to focus on removal of particular species? Do we want to think about maintaining some of the functions of these environments?
So in terms of carbon storage or pollination or seed dispersal, these important roles that they have, how do we want to deal with that? And what are the cultural values associated with these particular species? So there's a lot to think about in terms of how we want to conserve in the future. But the lessons on Oahu is that certainly that these non-native species can be really embedded into these communities. They can be really stable. The birds out there have preferences. They don't just eat whatever's on the landscape, but they have preferences for particular species. And so we can take some of these lessons and think about how we'll apply it to new ecosystems. Think about what are some of the ways that we can promote native species? Think about the roles of these non-native species in the environment.
Dana Taylor:
Is there an upside to novel ecosystems? Has your research allowed you to gain a deeper understanding about the future of life on this planet?
Corey Tarwater:
Novel ecosystems are our future, right, and they're a challenge because they're going to just increase into the future. Right. With continued change in climate and land use change and movement of people, we want to study them so that we understand how they function, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in these environments? So I think the upside is that we can maintain some of these ecosystem functions, that we can have invasive trees that are really good at carbon storage. We can have non-native birds that are really good at pollination and seed dispersal. The upside is that there are some species that can help fill the role of some of these species that are going extinct.
The downside is certainly that at the same time, these invasive species are causing global biodiversity loss. And so it's not, you're looking for a good silver lining once you've already created this environment with this novel ecosystem. So there's certainly, again, roles that species can play, non-native species can play to maintain these ecosystems. But in the ideal world, we'd also have areas where we can maintain these native communities as much as possible. So I think separating out what we mean by non-native versus invasive is really important. Invasive are bad, right? That's just what they are. But non-native don't have to be bad, right? They can actually be playing helpful roles in ecosystems.
Dana Taylor:
Finally, I know you recently returned from a trip to Hawaii. What's next for you and your team?
Corey Tarwater:
Our next steps are to experimentally remove some of these highly invasive species. So we've looked at how the role that these native and non-native species play in the ecosystem, and we understand what the birds like and how we can increase frugivory and all that type of stuff on the native plants. But now what we want to do is we want to remove some of these really highly invasive plant species, which is what restoration is doing now, and see what happens. Do the birds, do they eat something else? And if they eat something else, what do they eat? Do they eat the native plants or they just continue to eat the non-native plants? Can we create some sort of restoration area that it's going to encourage the birds to eat more native fruits? And so it's going to be these big crazy experiments where we're basically removing two of the worst invasive plant species on Oahu and looking to see how the birds respond, and if we can create an ideal kind of restoration sites for land managers to work with.
Dana Taylor:
It's fascinating. Corey, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Corey Tarwater:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producers Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Freakosystems': Where novel ecosystems are the norm
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