Ecological and socio‐economic impacts of invasive water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes): a review

Abstract

SUMMARY1. Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is one of the world's most invasive aquatic plants and is known to cause significant ecological and socio-economic effects. 2. Water hyacinth can alter water clarity and decrease phytoplankton production, dissolved oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, heavy metals and concentrations of other contaminants. 3. The effects of water hyacinth on ecological communities appear to be largely nonlinear. Abundance and diversity of aquatic invertebrates generally increase in response to increased habitat heterogeneity and structural complexity provided by water hyacinth but decrease due to decreased phytoplankton (food) availability. 4. Effects of water hyacinth on fish are largely dependent on original community composition and food-web structure. A more diverse and abundant epiphytic invertebrate community may increase fish abundance and diversity, but a decrease in phytoplankton may decrease dissolved oxygen concentrations and planktivorous fish abundance, subsequently affecting higher trophic levels. 5. Little is known about the effects of water hyacinth on waterbird communities; however, increases in macroinvertebrate and fish abundance and diversity suggest a potentially positive interaction with waterbirds when water hyacinth is at moderate density. 6. The socio-economic effects of water hyacinth are dependent on the extent of the invasion, the uses of the impacted waterbody, control methods and the response to control efforts. Ecosystem-level research programmes that simultaneously monitor the effects of water hyacinth on multiple trophic-levels are needed to further our understanding of invasive species.

Regime shift in the littoral ecosystem of volcanic Lake Atitlán in Central America: combined role of stochastic event and invasive plant species

“…So far, no loss of native species has been recorded at Lake Atitlan, but the abundance of submersed native species has declined (Table S2) (Li et al, 2015;Villamagna & Murphy, 2010), and there is a general consensus that floating plants typically outcompete submersed plants and phytoplankton due to shading (Scheffer et al, 2003). Eichhornia appears to outcompete Hydrilla in nutrient-rich waters.…”

“…There are many examples of invasive species supplanting native species; many of these represent a replacement of submersed by floating-leaved or floating macrophytes (Goodwin, Caraco, & Cole, 2008;Li et al, 2015;Villamagna & Murphy, 2010). The natural order of lake succession is for plant functional groups to shift from submersed to floating-leaved, to emergent.…”

Invasive species and their impacts on agri-ecosystems: issues and solutions for restoring ecosystem processes

“…Without such information the risk is that, in an effort to be 'doing something', managers spend inadequate money to achieve real improvements (e.g. water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes: Villamagna and Murphy 2010).…”

Reviews on land use change induced effects on regional hydrological ecosystem services for integrated water resources management

“…However, ecological measures sometimes incur more threatening hydrological problems when they are not matched well with regional hydrological ecosystem. As we all know, while water hyacinth was proved that it can be treated as a biosorbent to remove heavy metals or plant nutrients from polluted water for water purification (Ibrahim et al, 2012), it is also one of the world's worst aquatic weeds caused severe bio-invasion (Villamagna and Murphy, 2010).…”