Maintenance management and eradication of established aquatic invaders

Abstract

Although freshwater invasions have not been targeted for maintenance management or eradication as often as terrestrial invasions have, attempts to do so are frequent. Failures as well as successes abound, but several methods have been improved and new approaches are on the horizon. Many freshwater fish and plant invaders have been eliminated, especially by chemical and physical methods for fishes and herbicides for plants. Efforts to maintain invasive freshwater fishes at low levels have sometimes succeeded, although continuing the effort has proven challenging. By contrast, successful maintenance management of invasive freshwater plants is uncommon, although populations of several species have been managed by biological control. Invasive crayfish populations have rarely been controlled for long. Marine invasions have proven far less tractable than those in fresh water, with a few striking eradications of species detected before they had spread widely, and no marine invasions have been substantially managed for long at low levels. The rapid development of technologies based on genetics has engendered excitement about possibly eradicating or controlling terrestrial invaders, and such technologies may also prove useful for certain aquatic invaders. Methods of particular interest, alone or in various combinations, are genesilencing, RNA-guided gene drives, and the use of transgenes.

Aquatic invasive species: introduction to the Special Issue and dynamics of public interest

“…Managing and eradicating invasive species is one of the greatest challenges in the field of invasion biology. The efforts to eradicate or manage freshwater and marine aquatic invasive species were extensively reviewed by Simberloff (2021), who summarized results obtained using several established approaches as well as new methods currently in development (including advances in molecular genetics). There are many examples of successful and failed eradication and management efforts; however, more instances of successful control have been observed with recent, localized invasions (Simberloff, 2021).…”

“…The efforts to eradicate or manage freshwater and marine aquatic invasive species were extensively reviewed by Simberloff (2021), who summarized results obtained using several established approaches as well as new methods currently in development (including advances in molecular genetics). There are many examples of successful and failed eradication and management efforts; however, more instances of successful control have been observed with recent, localized invasions (Simberloff, 2021). Maintenance management of freshwater fish invaders tended to be more successful than that for aquatic plants, and marine invasions tend to be even more difficult to manage than those in freshwater habitats (Simberloff, 2021).…”

“…There are many examples of successful and failed eradication and management efforts; however, more instances of successful control have been observed with recent, localized invasions (Simberloff, 2021). Maintenance management of freshwater fish invaders tended to be more successful than that for aquatic plants, and marine invasions tend to be even more difficult to manage than those in freshwater habitats (Simberloff, 2021). Risk assessment can be useful for prioritizing monitoring and early eradication of the highest risk invaders (Stasolla et al, 2021), especially in areas with recognized invasion debt, or a clear lag between establishment and spread (Galil et al, 2021).…”

“…Monitoring and eradication efforts may benefit from more precise mapping of the spatial distribution of invasive species, such as underwater remote sensing approaches for detection and quantification of zebra mussels (Karatayev et al, 2021). Promising new approaches for managing AIS include gene-silencing, RNA-guided gene drives, and the use of transgenes as well as non-genetic approaches such as pheromone and sterile male techniques (Simberloff, 2021). Because the vectors of introduction of AIS are expected to further expand and diversify (Seebens et al, 2018), invasion biology has an important role to play in finding new and more efficient ways to reverse this trend and minimize the damage caused by already established invasive species.…”

“…Several recent reviews provide a good starting point to explore various aspects of aquatic invasive species (AIS) research including impacts modeling (Guy-Haim et al, 2018;Anton et al, 2019;Corrales et al, 2020;Thomsen 2020), traits and impacts (Boltovskoy et al, 2021), invasion syndromes (Novoa et al, 2020), first record rates (Seebens et al, 2017), effects on endangered and threatened species (Dueñas et al, 2018), food web effects (Gallardo et al, 2016;David et al, 2017), role of parsites in marine invasions (Goedknegt et al, 2016), impacts on ecosystem functions and services (Flood et al, 2020), management and eradiation (Simberloff, 2021), social perception (Kapitza et al, 2019) and policy issues (Geller et al, 2020).…”