The faunal Ponto-Caspianization of central and western European waterways

Ismael Soto , Ross N Cuthbert , Anthony Ricciardi , Danish A Ahmed , Florian Altermatt , Ralf B Schäfer , Gaït Archambaud-Suard , Núria Bonada , Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles , Zoltán Csabai , Thibault Datry , Jaimie T A Dick , Mathieu Floury , Marie Anne Eurie Forio , Maxence Forcellini , Jean-François Fruget , Peter Goethals , Peter Haase , Emma J Hudgins , J. Iwan Jones , Antonín Kouba , Patrick Leitner , Marie-Helène Lizée , Anthony Maire (1) , John F Murphy , Davis Ozolins , Jes Jessen Rasmussen , Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber , Agnija Skuja , Rachel Stubbington , Gea H van der Lee , Rudy Vannevel , Gábor Várbíró , Ralf C M Verdonschot , Peter Wiberg-Larsen , Phillip J Haubrock , Elizabeta Briski

1 EDF R&D LNHE - Laboratoire National d’Hydraulique et Environnement

As alien invasive species are a key driver of biodiversity loss, understanding patterns of rapidly changing global species compositions depends upon knowledge of invasive species population dynamics and trends at large scales. Within this context, the Ponto-Caspian region is among the most notable donor regions for aquatic invasive species in Europe. Using macroinvertebrate time series collected over 52 years (1968-2020) at 265 sites across 11 central and western European countries, we examined the occurrences, invasion rates, and abundances of freshwater Ponto-Caspian fauna. We examined whether: (i) successive Ponto-Caspian invasions follow a consistent pattern of composition pioneered by the same species, and (ii) Ponto-Caspian invasion accelerates subsequent invasion rates. In our dataset, Ponto-Caspian macroinvertebrates increased from two species in 1972 to 29 species in 2012. This trend was parallelled by a non-significant increasing trend in the abundances of Ponto-Caspian taxa.

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie

Ismael Soto, Ross N Cuthbert, Anthony Ricciardi, Danish A Ahmed, Florian Altermatt, et al.. The faunal Ponto-Caspianization of central and western European waterways. Biological Invasions, 2023, ⟨10.1007/s10530-023-03060-0⟩. ⟨hal-04083413⟩