Disturbance of the Florida Manatee by an Invasive Catfish

Salinity tolerance of non-native suckermouth armoured catfish (Loricariidae: Pterygoplichthys) in south-eastern Mexico: implications for invasion and dispersal

“…For example, in south-eastern USA, non-native Pterygoplichthys are known to congregate in spring habitats where they attach to and graze on the skin of native Florida manatees, Trichechus manatus latirostrix, an endangered aquatic mammal (Nico et al, 2009b;Nico, 2010). Over the long term, such a novel association may harm those manatees that are especially vulnerable, individuals seeking shelter during the winter in warm-water refugia (Nico et al, 2009b;Gibbs et al, 2010).…”

Amazon Sailfin Catfish Pterygoplichthys pardalis (Loricariidae) in Bangladesh: A Critical Review of Its Invasive Threat to Native and Endemic Aquatic Species

“…Pterygoplichthys species [9,32,38,40,45] and confamilials in America [28,34,[46][47][48][49][50][51] are considered demersal herbivores (with subterminal mouths) of value for algal control in aquaria [4,8,16,19,23,35,36,39,52], and their release or escape into the wild should be discouraged. Indeed, the expanding ranges of loricariids, particularly sailfin catfishes, into North America (since 1957 in Florida, but particularly during the 1990s) [27,53,54] are threatening the smaller-bodied, native minnows and other non-game fishes of peninsular Florida, Texas, other southern states (USA), Puerto Rico, and Mexico [4,8,9,34,43,46]. P. multiradiatus shows rapid growth, high fecundity, and female-biased sex ratios [24] that usually cause explosive population growth upon introduction [4,8,16,34].…”

“…The r-selected ("weedy") population dynamics (sensu [55,56]) of Pterygoplichthys and other loricariids is advantageous in temperate zones [18] but has negative effects on native fish and wildlife. Sailfin catfishes usually cause: (a) water-pollution, sanitary, and greenhouse-gas problems (via their feces and decomposition after fish kills); (b) pathogen spread to native fishes like minnows; and (c) harassment of threatened Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) [8,20,21,26,53,54] that (like human disturbances) elevates manatee overwintering-activity levels in warm-inshore waters [9,54]. Such temporary attachments allow skin-grazing for algae and other epibionts, and perhaps thermoregulation on the warm bodies of manatees [8,20,21,26,54].…”

“…They ingest algae, detritus, incidental sand, and various benthic invertebrates (including small bivalves) in Asia [16,24] and elsewhere [8,26,[58][59][60], sometimes even feeding on floodplain detritus [34] when traveling on land. They are known to eat artificial fish feed but not native-Asian fishes in aquaria [19], and their identifiable feces are worm-like [8,53]. Because plant foods are clearly dominant over animal prey [8], sailfin catfishes are not true omnivores, but rather incidental feeders of zoobenthos trapped within plant materials.…”

“…Sailfin catfishes are hardy macrohabitat generalists that escape harsh (dry/cold) weather in their shoreline-rearing burrows (given ample coelomic-fat storage) or on land (including short-distance dispersals) for up to 30 h (given air-breathing). They inhabit shoreline and shallower waters of soft or rocky beds in slower-moving streams (e.g., canals), and they generally inhabit clear but polluted (eutrophic/hypoxic) lentic and thermally heated waters (e.g., sewage outfalls) in Eurasia [9,19,24,32,[35][36][37]39,40], the southern USA [21,[25][26][27][28]34,53,57,65], and Ibero-America [8,18,41,66,67]. However, older (juvenile/adult) P. pardalis and other sailfin catfishes have recently occupied shallower, brackish waters of southern Florida and southeastern Mexico after storm flooding, though they apparently do not spawn there [20].…”