South Florida Invasive Species

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 By: Katie Durante, Tegan Williams, Claire Luhman

For our project we decided to choose the topic of invasive species since Florida has over 500 invasive species and has a nice and habitable climate. Invasive species are introduced organisms that negatively alter their new environment. Most of these invasive species compete with naive species but some can have even more of an impact. One example that we talked about was invasive goldfish who sometimes forage for food and in the process increase turbidity in the water which can make the area no longer habitable for other species. Usually the invasive species grow quickly and are able to breed and populate an area since their new environment lacks the natural predator that their original habitat had. One example we explored were Burmese pythons in the Everglades had no natural predator and were free to decimate native species population numbers and have even been known to eat alligators if large enough. Invasive species can wreak havoc on the natural environment.

As our main goal was to inform the public about Florida invasive species, we used concepts from the book Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere. Many of the general concepts were surrounded around environmental journalism in our blog-type posts on our Instagram and our website. We were able to alert the public about the issue of invasive species and target it at the Florida environment. We were then able to amplify our topic by creating the Instagram account and the website. We each posted it to our personal Instagram accounts to gain a wider audience. We also posted the website link in the Instagram page to allow those readers to find more information on each species, petitions for native Florida species and invasive species, and further resources through articles and videos. This allowed us to engage the readers by allowing them to click through our website and find these other resources posted. This was done through the “take action” link and the “resources” link.

    For our proposal we decided to curate an Instagram page and a website. For instagram we chose one invasive species to post a day and rotated between group members. Our website designer, Katie Durante, would transfer the information from our Instagram and add it to the website. Our website was the perfect choice for educating and catering to our targeted audience due to it’s easy accessibility and the simplistic design and links featured. On the website you can easily navigate the species blog, which includes pictures and descriptions of all the animals we had presented on our instagram page. There is also a “take action” link that includes three specialized links to related petitions that support  saving native species, and stopping the spread of invasive species. Lastly, on the website you can find a list of educational resources that include various materials on invasive species, how to stop the spread, resources to call and different ways the general public can contribute. Our Instagram and website received a great positive response from our targeted audience. Over a few weeks, the website had over 50 views and it has been continuously updated to provide more information on these invasive species. Some feedback we received on our Instagram page included, follows, likes and comments such as “Great Info!”

    Our original idea was to create a survey to send to the Eckerd student body and get a better understanding of what others knew about the invasive species in Florida. We then wanted to create a petition to help further the process of removing Brazilian pepper from Eckerd’s campus. However, we were later informed that this is an ongoing project at Eckerd already. We then decided to focus on all invasive species in South Florida to reach a larger audience. This allowed us to create the Instagram page and the website to deliver more information to the general public.

Instagram link - https://www.instagram.com/southfloridainvasives/
Website link - https://southfloridainvasives.weebly.com/

References:
Pezzullo, P. C., Cox, R. (2018). Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (5th Edition).

The harm of invasive species. (2018, September 4). Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida. https://wildlifeflorida.org/the-harm-of-invasive-species/

Goldfish (Carassius auratus)—Species profile. (n.d.). Retrieved May 19, 2021, from https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/FactSheet.aspx?speciesID=508


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