Did the extinct dodo help Calvaria major trees survive in Mauritius?
Did dodos help rare trees survive?
Is this an example of “coevolution” between two species?
Quick-read this article:
The last dodo became extinct in Mauritius in 1681. Researcher
Stanley Temple in the mid-1970s said this caused a threat to the
local Calvaria major trees, because dodos and calvarias had
a mutual dependence on one another. An evolutionary book said this
was “an extreme example of the phenomenon of coevolution
between two species.” But an article on the Botanical Society
of America website says Temple's research was flawed, and there are
other reasons the trees are endangered.
Settlers on the small tropical island of Mauritius in the Indian
Ocean in the early 1500s found a most unusual bird. It was as large
as a turkey, of ungainly build, with short curly tail feathers and
tiny wings. Because it had no fear of humans, the Portuguese named
it doudo, meaning “simpleton”.
Sailors and settlers slaughtered these dodos in large numbers. Pigs introduced to the island voraciously ate the birds' eggs. The last dodo was killed in 1681.
Also on Mauritius at the time was a tree known as Calvaria major. It was common on the island then, but by the 1970s only 13 living Calvaria trees were known. They were all more than 300 years old. Though they produced healthy looking seeds each year, none ever managed to germinate. The trees had puzzled botanists for centuries, for their numbers had begun to decline and no new trees were taking root. Calvaria major seemed destined for extinction like the dodo.
The dodo connection
In the mid-1970s American ecologist Stanley Temple came up with an explanation that linked the decline of Calvaria major trees and the disappearance of the dodo. Temple concluded that the dodo in times past had eaten the tree's large fruit.
The tree's seeds are encased in a thick-walled protective coat, but the dodo's stone-filled gizzard, Temple said, would have exerted a powerful crushing pressure on them. The bird's gizzard (a second stomach for grinding food) would weaken and crack the seed's coat, but not enough to damage the seed inside. When eventually deposited by the dodo the seed would germinate.
Temple suggested that without the grinding of the dodo's gizzard to weaken the thick protective wall, the seed was trapped in its hard case. When the dodo became extinct just over 300 years ago, Calvaria major's seeds had no way of germinating, Temple said. So no new trees grew.
Turkeys take over
In the book The Evoluton of Life, edited by Linda Gamlin and Gail Vines (Guild Publishing, London, 1986), the authors tell how Stanley Temple researched the link between the dodo and the Calvaria major tree. They say that today the Calvaria major seeds are encouraged to germinate by being fed to turkeys or by turning them in a gemstone polisher.
But is all this dodo–calvaria dependence true?
Botanical Society of America's view
A well-documented article in the Botanical Society of America's Plant Science Bulletin (December 2004) says Temple's research was flawed. It says: “Temple's 1977 Science article promoting the idea that the tambalacoque [calvaria] required the dodo was an example of poor science that has been repeatedly debunked.”
The Plant Science Bulletin article says in its conclusion there are several reasons the tree is endangered, such as “widespread deforestation, competition from introduced plants and destruction of seeds and seedlings by introduced animals such as monkeys and pigs.”
An unfortunate lapse in the Plant Science Bulletin article is that the author criticizes creationist websites for accepting Temple's research as factual. It criticizes some websites (such as ours, presumably, although it does not mention us by name) for “exaggerating” the story when we say “Temple's use of turkeys to treat the seeds has been used to save the tree from extinction.”
Yet creationist websites like ours got the information from evolutionists themselves. The book we mentioned above (The Evoluton of Life, edited by Linda Gamlin and Gail Vines), has been widely used as a source of this story about the dodo–calvaria link, and about the turkeys. And goodness!, Temple's paper did appear in Science, an evolutionist journal.
If evolutionists can't get their facts right in Science and other widely circulated evolution-promoting publications, don't blame creationists for it.
The Calvary–calvaria link
The name of the Calvaria major tree has a little-known link with Calvary — the hill near the ancient city of Jerusalem where Jesus Christ was crucified. The reason is that the name Calvary comes from the Latin word calvaria, meaning “skull.” It is a translation of the Greek kranion, which is a translation of the Aramaic word gulgalta, which is mentioned in the Bible as Golgotha (“a place of a skull” — Matthew 27:33).
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