It took me a few rereads to understand this, but I think the claim is that wild-harvested carmine lead net negative lives because of premature death. Thus, because biosynthetic alternative exploration reduces wild-harvested cochineals, this will increase the total number of cochineals and be net negative.
yes, what Linch said is correct in terms of my reasoning. I think that collecting pregnant females from the wild decreases the number of cochineals who die young, but I imagine that it doesn’t decrease long-term cochineal populations much, otherwise it would be unsustainable. It took me a long time to get my head around all this and I’m still unsure about a lot of stuff, due to a lack of information and it being a bit confusing.
It’s possible it could keep populations at a lower average size without being unsustainable. With standard simple fishery models (Gordon-Schaefer models, no predators besides humans), there are actually equilibria at every population size below the “natural” one, corresponding to each fixed harvest rate (share of population caught per period). Any (relative) harvest rate per period less than 100% can be sustainable long term if fixed, but not every absolute catch number below the natural population size can be sustainable long term if fixed.
It took me a few rereads to understand this, but I think the claim is that wild-harvested carmine lead net negative lives because of premature death. Thus, because biosynthetic alternative exploration reduces wild-harvested cochineals, this will increase the total number of cochineals and be net negative.
yes, what Linch said is correct in terms of my reasoning. I think that collecting pregnant females from the wild decreases the number of cochineals who die young, but I imagine that it doesn’t decrease long-term cochineal populations much, otherwise it would be unsustainable. It took me a long time to get my head around all this and I’m still unsure about a lot of stuff, due to a lack of information and it being a bit confusing.
It’s possible it could keep populations at a lower average size without being unsustainable. With standard simple fishery models (Gordon-Schaefer models, no predators besides humans), there are actually equilibria at every population size below the “natural” one, corresponding to each fixed harvest rate (share of population caught per period). Any (relative) harvest rate per period less than 100% can be sustainable long term if fixed, but not every absolute catch number below the natural population size can be sustainable long term if fixed.
The maximum sustainable yield for fisheries occurs with the population being at or under half of the natural population. I think well-managed fisheries (with quotas) are in fact at around half their natural populations, setting natural fluctuations aside. https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing#what-does-sustainable-fishing-mean