h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I imagined that marsupials were the only game in town in Australia/New Zealand, but I see 400 mammal species, including dingos. Cane toads and rabbits were brought over, and you've mentioned sheep. Also crocodiles and snakes....

And Cassowaries. And platypuses.

Fascinating.

Hello Paulh! Well those mammals are mostly marsupials. The native land-living placental mammals of Australia and New Zealand are only rodents and bats!

Dingoes are not marsupials. I'm not saying that they might have been prey for the animal you featured, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mammals_of_Australia

Of course, 64 native rodents might have been good prey.

I would gladly have given them the mice that infest my house.

And dingoes arrived at least 8,300 years ago. Or 4,000 years ago. take your pick. And they may have arrived when humans arrived. But that was so long ago that they are considered indigenous now, as are the humans who probably brought them.

At any rate, as part of a predator's food supply, anything small enough to be eaten would count.

Well ... I consider nativeness on a somewhat different scale. A good time for a species to be around is 1 million years. For a new species to be native I would ask about 100 000 years, giving it time to adapt to its own time and place as well as to give everything else time to adapt to it. But this is just me. There's not really a scientifically objective standard for 'nativeness'.

Some estimates of the "age" of Homo Sapiens clock in at around 800,000 years. We aren't native to any of the places where we live.

I don't know if any of the species on Hawaii's volcanic islands are native, as some of those islands didn't exist a million years ago.

Perhaps there are many species that didn't exist a million years ago, and they came into existence and then went extinct before our time. Neanderthals came into existence about 200,000 years ago. They have already gone extinct, though some scientists think that portions of their DNA persist in our genome.

100 000 years, not a million! The adjustment period is 1 tenth of the lifespan of a species. And that's just for my own purpose of thinking about nativeness ... the idea is to never change important ecological factors very rapidly, beyond the biosphere's ability to adapt. So I'm being very conservative.

I appreciate that.

A sad footnote is that Honey bees existed in North American for 14 million years, but went extinct before the Pleistocene and Pliocene.

Wow I didn't know that! Where did you learn that?

I learned it a few years ago. I own a book called "The bees in http://www.amazon.com/Bees-Your-Backyard-Guide-Americas/dp/0691160775/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19FJF2TH8V5AH&dchild=1&keywords=bees+in+your+backyard&qid=1611860071&sprefix=bees+in+your+yard%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1

Some time around 2006, the collapse of bee hives sent shock waves through American society
http://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/br/ccd/index/

I vowed to be part of the solution whenever possible, not just for bees for all pollinators. I started by planting a butterfly garden along the edges of my house. Starting in 2014, I planted native flowering plants (indeed native plants in general) around the periphery of the trailer park I live in. Now that Monarch butterflies are known to be in danger, I've planted four species of milkweed in my yard.

I hopesomeone else will take up the cause, as I have worn myself out.