The human-mediated introduction of marine non-indigenous species is a centuries- if not millennia-old phenomenon, but was only recently acknowledged as a potent driver of change in the sea. We ...provide a synopsis of key historical milestones for marine bioinvasions, including timelines of (a) discovery and understanding of the invasion process, focusing on transfer mechanisms and outcomes, (b) methodologies used for detection and monitoring, (c) approaches to ecological impacts research, and (d) management and policy responses. Early (until the mid-1900s) marine bioinvasions were given little attention, and in a number of cases actively and routinely facilitated. Beginning in the second half of the 20th century, several conspicuous non-indigenous species outbreaks with strong environmental, economic, and public health impacts raised widespread concerns and initiated shifts in public and scientific perceptions. These high-profile invasions led to policy documents and strategies to reduce the introduction and spread of non-indigenous species, although with significant time lags and limited success and focused on only a subset of transfer mechanisms. Integrated, multi-vector management within an ecosystem-based marine management context is urgently needed to address the complex interactions of natural and human pressures that drive invasions in marine ecosystems.
Tsunami-driven rafting Carlton, James T.; Chapman, John W.; Geller, Jonathan B. ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
09/2017, Letnik:
357, Številka:
6358
Journal Article
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The 2011 East Japan earthquake generated a massive tsunami that launched an extraordinary transoceanic biological rafting event with no known historical precedent. We document 289 living Japanese ...coastal marine species from 16 phyla transported over 6 years on objects that traveled thousands of kilometers across the Pacific Ocean to the shores of North America and Hawai‘i. Most of this dispersal occurred on nonbiodegradable objects, resulting in the longest documented transoceanic survival and dispersal of coastal species by rafting. Expanding shoreline infrastructure has increased global sources of plastic materials available for biotic colonization and also interacts with climate change–induced storms of increasing severity to eject debris into the oceans. In turn, increased ocean rafting may intensify species invasions.
Latitudinal patterns of nonnative species richness suggest fewer successful invasions in the tropics, relative to temperate regions. One main hypothesis for this pattern is that biotic resistance to ...invasion is stronger in the tropics than at higher latitudes. Biotic resistance can limit the distribution and abundance of nonnative species and, in extreme cases, can prevent establishment. We provide the first experimental test of this hypothesis, comparing the strength of biotic resistance in a tropical and a temperate marine ecosystem. Predation is one mechanism of biotic resistance, and since predation can be stronger at lower latitudes, we predicted that predation will serve to increase biotic resistance more in the tropics than at higher latitude. We conducted predator-exclusion experiments on marine epifaunal communities, a heavily invaded system, focusing on nonnative tunicates as a model fauna. The effect of predation on species richness of nonnative tunicates was more than three times greater at sites in tropical Panama than in temperate Connecticut, consistent with the prediction of stronger biotic resistance in the tropics. In Connecticut, predation reduced the abundance of one nonnative tunicate but did not affect the abundances of any other nonnative tunicate species, and no species were excluded from communities. In contrast, predation resulted in striking reductions in abundance and often exclusion of nonnative tunicates from experimental communities in Panama. If proved to be general, latitudinal differences in the biotic resistance of communities to nonnative species establishment may help explain emerging patterns of global invasions.
Aim
The introduction of aquatic non‐indigenous species (ANS) has become a major driver for global changes in species biogeography. We examined spatial patterns and temporal trends of ANS detections ...since 1965 to inform conservation policy and management.
Location
Global.
Methods
We assembled an extensive dataset of first records of detection of ANS (1965–2015) across 49 aquatic ecosystems, including the (a) year of first collection, (b) population status and (c) potential pathway(s) of introduction. Data were analysed at global and regional levels to assess patterns of detection rate, richness and transport pathways.
Results
An annual mean of 43 (±16 SD) primary detections of ANS occurred—one new detection every 8.4 days for 50 years. The global rate of detections was relatively stable during 1965–1995, but increased rapidly after this time, peaking at roughly 66 primary detections per year during 2005–2010 and then declining marginally. Detection rates were variable within and across regions through time. Arthropods, molluscs and fishes were the most frequently reported ANS. Most ANS were likely introduced as stowaways in ships’ ballast water or biofouling, although direct evidence is typically absent.
Main conclusions
This synthesis highlights the magnitude of recent ANS detections, yet almost certainly represents an underestimate as many ANS go unreported due to limited search effort and diminishing taxonomic expertise. Temporal rates of detection are also confounded by reporting lags, likely contributing to the lower detection rate observed in recent years. There is a critical need to implement standardized, repeated methods across regions and taxa to improve the quality of global‐scale comparisons and sustain core measures over longer time‐scales. It will be fundamental to fill in knowledge gaps given that invasion data representing broad regions of the world's oceans are not yet readily available and to maintain knowledge pipelines for adaptive management.
We identified emerging scientific, technological, and sociopolitical issues likely to affect how biological invasions are studied and managed over the next two decades. Issues were ranked according ...to their probability of emergence, pervasiveness, potential impact, and novelty. Top-ranked issues include the application of genomic modification tools to control invasions, effects of Arctic globalization on invasion risk in the Northern Hemisphere, commercial use of microbes to facilitate crop production, the emergence of invasive microbial pathogens, and the fate of intercontinental trade agreements. These diverse issues suggest an expanding interdisciplinary role for invasion science in biosecurity and ecosystem management, burgeoning applications of biotechnology in alien species detection and control, and new frontiers in the microbial ecology of invasions.
Expanding transportation networks, technological advances, global environmental change, and geopolitical forces are transforming risks of invasion worldwide.
Genomic modification tools offer novel risks and potential solutions to managing invasions.
Rapid warming and intensified human activities in the Arctic will alter invasion patterns and risks across the Northern Hemisphere.
Anthropogenic stressors promote rapid evolutionary shifts that cause native and alien populations to become invasive.
Microbial ecology is becoming increasingly relevant to understanding and managing invasions.
Discoveries of persistent coastal species in the open ocean shift our understanding of biogeographic barriers. Floating plastic debris from pollution now supports a novel sea surface community ...composed of coastal and oceanic species at sea that might portend significant ecological shifts in the marine environment.
A Plasticene Lexicon Haram, Linsey E.; Carlton, James T.; Ruiz, Gregory M. ...
Marine pollution bulletin,
January 2020, 2020-Jan, 2020-01-00, 20200101, Letnik:
150
Journal Article
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As plastic pollution in the environment has increased rapidly in the last half century, so too has the study of the effects of plastic on marine, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. From this ...research, a series of new terms has emerged to describe the phenomena unique to the presence of plastic-based materials in nature. In this short note, we bring together disparate neologisms into a single lexicon with the aim to encourage use of a unified vocabulary to describe the new reality of ecological, chemical, and geological systems in the age of plastics.
Species interactions are widely assumed to be stronger at lower latitudes, but surprisingly few experimental studies test this hypothesis, and none ties these processes to observed patterns of ...species richness across latitude. We report here the first experimental field test that predation is both stronger and has a disproportionate effect on species richness in the tropics relative to the temperate zone. We conducted predator-exclusion experiments on communities of sessile marine invertebrates in four regions, which span 32°° latitude, in the western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Over a three-month timescale, predation had no effect on species richness in the temperate zone. In the tropics, however, communities were from two to over ten times more species-rich in the absence of predators than when predators were present. While micro-and macro-predators likely compete for the limited prey resource in the tropics, micropredators alone were able to exert as much pressure on the invertebrate communities as the full predator community. This result highlights the extent to which exposure to even a subset of the predator guild can significantly impact species richness in the tropics. Patterns were consistent in analyses that included relative and total species abundances. Higher species richness in the absence of predators in the tropics was also observed when species occurrences were pooled across two larger spatial scales, site and region, demonstrating a consistent scaling relationship. These experimental results show that predation can both limit local species abundances and shape patterns of regional coexistence in the tropics. When preestablished diverse tropical communities were then exposed to predation for different durations, ranging from one to several days, species richness was always reduced. These findings confirmed that impacts of predation in the tropics are strong and consistent, even in more established communities. Our results offer empirical support for the long-held prediction that predation pressure is stronger at lower latitudes. Furthermore, we demonstrate the magnitude to which variation in predation pressure can contribute to the maintenance of tropical species diversity.
The North Atlantic intertidal gastropod, Littorina saxatilis (Olivi, 1792), exhibits extreme morphological variation between and within geographic regions and has become a model for studies of local ...adaptation; yet a comprehensive analysis of the species' phylogeography is lacking. Here, we examine phylogeographic patterns of the species' populations in the North Atlantic and one remote Mediterranean population using sequence variation in a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene (607 bp). We found that, as opposed to many other rocky intertidal species, L. saxatilis has likely had a long and continuous history in the Northwest Atlantic, including survival during the last glacial maximum (LGM), possibly in two refugia. In the Northeast Atlantic, several areas likely harboured refugial populations that recolonized different parts of this region after glacial retreat, resulting in strong population structure. However, the outlying monomorphic Venetian population is likely a recent anthropogenic introduction from northern Europe and not a remnant of an earlier wider distribution in the Mediterranean Sea. Overall, our detailed phylogeography of L. saxatilis adds an important piece to the understanding of Pleistocene history in North Atlantic marine biota as well as being the first study to describe the species' evolutionary history in its natural range. The latter contribution is noteworthy because the snail has recently become an important model species for understanding evolutionary processes of speciation; thus our work provides integral information for such endeavours.
Understanding the likely future impacts of biological invasions is crucial yet highly challenging given the multiple relevant environmental, socio‐economic and societal contexts and drivers. In the ...absence of quantitative models, methods based on expert knowledge are the best option for assessing future invasion trajectories. Here, we present an expert assessment of the drivers of potential alien species impacts under contrasting scenarios and socioecological contexts through the mid‐21st century. Based on responses from 36 experts in biological invasions, moderate (20%–30%) increases in invasions, compared to the current conditions, are expected to cause major impacts on biodiversity in most socioecological contexts. Three main drivers of biological invasions—transport, climate change and socio‐economic change—were predicted to significantly affect future impacts of alien species on biodiversity even under a best‐case scenario. Other drivers (e.g. human demography and migration in tropical and subtropical regions) were also of high importance in specific global contexts (e.g. for individual taxonomic groups or biomes). We show that some best‐case scenarios can substantially reduce potential future impacts of biological invasions. However, rapid and comprehensive actions are necessary to use this potential and achieve the goals of the Post‐2020 Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Distribution of uncertainty if 15 major drivers of biological invasions will exhibit major impacts on the environment by 2050 under a best‐ and worst‐case scenario.
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