SC - the peanut thing and other introductions

[Jeff Heilveil]

Sault!
In general, though archaelogical digs are helpful, there are much easier
ways to go about finding the origin of a plant.  this is routinely done
for pests species, and I will outline the method.  It relies heavily on
two things, biogeography and insect diversity.

1) take a map and mark off all the places where the species is found.  In
another color, mark off all of the places where other members of the genus
are found.  This may give you a seeming "hot spot" which may guide your
search.

2) in a third color mark off where pests of this plant are found, being
sure that you indicate the number of pests in a given area.  

3)Look for obvious connections between countries, as well as the
not-st-obvious connections like all the countries that were in
Gondwanaland or Laurasia.

4) correlations between the two often help, though so may an area with a
large number of pests, a decent number of conspecifics and where the plant
in question is rare.  That would merely suggest that it is well under
control by herbivore populations.  

Granted that this will be hard for cash crops, but may prove fun and
interesting.  Also, it does work well for other plants.

Yours in Service.

Cu drag,
Bogdan

_______________________________________________________________________________
Jeffrey Heilveil				Bogdan din Brasov
Department of Entomology		    MoAS, Barony of Wurm Wald
University of Illinois		       Bucatar-sef, Liedmeister, Wurm Wald
heilveil at uiuc.edu				 Middle Kingdom
(217) 398-9529

"If physicists had to model electrons that behaved differently when they
were hungry, they would probably not be much ahead of ecologists." 

- - Duncan and Weston-Smith, 1978 _The encyclopedia of ignorance.
Everything you wanted to know about the unknown_.  IN Hall, 1988.  An
Assessment of Several of the Historically Most Influential Theoretical
Models Used in Ecology and of the Data Provided in their Support.
Ecological Modelling. 43: 5-31.

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