Recommendations for developing and applying genetic tools to assess and manage biological invasions in marine ecosystems

Abstract

The European Union’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) aims to adopt integrated ecosystem management approaches to achieve or maintain “Good Environmental Status” for marine waters, habitats and resources, including mitigation of the negative effects of non-indigenous species (NIS). The Directive further seeks to promote broadly standardized monitoring efforts and assessment of temporal trends in marine ecosystem condition, incorporating metrics describing the distribution and impacts of NIS. Accomplishing these goals will require application of advanced tools for NIS surveillance and risk assessment, particularly given known challenges associated with surveying and monitoring with traditional methods. In the past decade, a host of methods based on nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) analysis have been developed or advanced that promise to dramatically enhance capacity in assessing and managing NIS. However, ensuring that these rapidly evolving approaches remain accessible and responsive to the needs of resource managers remains a challenge. This paper provides recommendations for future development of these genetic tools for assessment and management of NIS in marine systems, within the context of the explicit requirements of the MSFD. Issues considered include technological innovation, methodological standardization, data sharing and collaboration, and the critical importance of shared foundational resources, particularly integrated taxonomic expertise. Though the recommendations offered here are not exhaustive, they provide a basis for future intentional (and international) collaborative development of a genetic toolkit for NIS research, capable of fulfilling the immediate and long term goals of marine ecosystem and resource conservation.

Performance of amplicon and shotgun sequencing for accurate biomass estimation in invertebrate community samples

“…The importance of optimizing and standardizing such sequencing approaches is linked to generating more informative estimates of ecological interactions across taxa and trophic levels, as well as ecosystem functioning (Darling et al., ). Traditional monitoring is applied on individual or a limited number of species, which may not necessarily capture subtle responses to ecological change.…”

Cryptic Diversity and Database Errors Challenge Non-indigenous Species Surveys: An Illustration With Botrylloides spp. in the English Channel and Mediterranean Sea

“…However, identifying new or recently introduced NIS can be challenging when based only on traditional methods (Darling et al, 2017), such as rapid assessment surveys (RAS), which rely heavily on field recognition of species and have been commonly used to survey NIS in marinas and harbors (e.g., Cohen et al, 2005;Arenas et al, 2006;Campbell et al, 2007;Bishop et al, 2015a;Lehtiniemi et al, 2015). Many marine animal NIS in introduction hotspots belong to taxonomic groups, such as bryozoans, hydrozoans and tunicates, that require substantial taxonomic expertise.…”

“…In addition, the development of molecular studies in the last three decades has revealed a large number of cryptic species (i.e., species that are not distinguishable based on morphological traits) in these taxonomic groups (Knowlton, 2000;Appeltans et al, 2012). Consequently, an increasing number of studies have recommended the use of molecular tools to complement the traditional methods, and thus achieve reliable taxonomic identification of marine NIS (Comtet et al, 2015;Darling et al, 2017;Dias et al, 2017).…”

Population genomics of the introduced and cultivated Pacific kelp Undaria pinnatifida: Marinas—not farms—drive regional connectivity and establishment in natural rocky reefs

“…DNA‐based studies can shed light on the eco‐evolutionary processes sustaining successful introductions and establishment of NIS (Bock et al., 2015; Rius, Turon, Bernard, Volckaert, & Viard, 2015), and guide policies directed towards the prevention or the management of NIS (Darling et al., 2017). They can provide evidence for the ‘spillover’ and ‘source–sink’ processes mentioned above, currently largely investigated with indirect approaches using field survey methods.…”