Status of Aquatic Invasion Ecology: Argentina and South America

SCHWINDT E

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Marine and Freshwater Invasive Species; 2016

AEHMS and CONICET

For centuries, humans have been transporting all kind of species around the world. However, the fact that different regions are unevenly studied leads us to overestimate what we really know about patterns and processes in aquatic bioinvasion ecology as a whole. In this work I reviewed the current state of aquatic invasive species in South America (SA) by performing exhaustive searches in electronic databases such as ASFA, Scopus, Google Scholar and Scielo, between 2004 and 2014. For my search I used an extensive list of multilingual keywords that combined different terms and their synonyms, regions, topics, and names. I found nearly 500 publications for SA, 60% of which were framed by biological/ecological topics, followed by a 22% of new-record or range-expansion publications. Marine studies equaled freshwater ecosystem studies. Most publications were produced in Argentina and Brazil, however, if the number of publications is weighted according to the size of these countries, coastal length or population density, then, other countries such as Chile and Uruguay emerge as important. Not surprisingly, only 2% of the publications correspond to collaborative works involving two or more countries. Crustaceans, algae, mollusks and fish are the focus of most studies in marine habitats, while fish and mollusk are the most important in freshwater habitats, and polychaetes and mollusks in estuarine habitats. The study of ecological strategies threatening the integrity of invaded ecosystems are scattered in time and space. The gross numbers of publications I found were mostly regional studies focused on relatively few species, suggesting an urgent need for inter-regional collaborative studies that might lead us to a more integrative and precise sense of the ecological impacts of invasive species within this vast region. Correcting this skewness will determine our chances of success to prevent and control future invasions.