Ocean-going ships carry, as ballast, seawater that is taken on in port and released at subsequent ports of call. Plankton samples from Japanese ballast water released in Oregon contained 367 taxa. Most taxa with a planktonic phase in their life cycle were found in ballast water, as were all major marine habitat and trophic groups. Transport of entire coastal planktonic assemblages across oceanic barriers to similar habitats renders bays, estuaries, and inland waters among the most threatened ecosystems in the world. Presence of taxonomically difficult or inconspicuous taxa in these samples suggests that ballast water invasions are already pervasive.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/261/5117/78.full.pdf

Ecological Roulette: The Global Transport of Nonindigenous Marine Organisms

Predicting the likely success of invasions is vitally important in ecology and especially epidemiology. Whether an organism can successfully invade and persist in the short–term is highly dependent on the spatial correlations that develop in the early stages of invasion. By modelling the correlations between individuals, we are able to understand the role of spatial heterogeneity in invasion dynamics without the need for large–scale computer simulations. Here, a natural methodology is developed for modelling the behaviour of individuals in a fixed network. This formulation is applied to the spread of a disease through a structured network to determine invasion thresholds and some statistical properties of a single epidemic.

/pdf/the-effects-of-local-spatial-structure-on-epidemiological-rmyretwv10.pdf

The effects of local spatial structure on epidemiological invasions.

Nonindigenous vectors that arrive, establish, and spread in new areas have fomented throughout recorded history epidemics of human diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, typhus, and plague. Although some vagile vectors, such as adults of black flies, biting midges, and tsetse flies, have dispersed into new habitats by flight or wind, human-aided transport is responsible for the arrival and spread of most invasive vectors, such as anthropophilic fleas, lice, kissing bugs, and mosquitoes. From the fifteenth century to the present, successive waves of invasion of the vector mosquitoes Aedes aegypti, the Culex pipiens Complex, and, most recently, Aedes albopictus have been facilitated by worldwide ship transport. Aircraft have been comparatively unimportant for the transport of mosquito invaders. Mosquito species that occupy transportable container habitats, such as water-holding automobile tires, have been especially successful as recent invaders. Propagule pressure, previous success, and adaptations to human habits appear to favor successful invasions by vectors.

Invasions by insect vectors of human disease

1. The introduction of non-native species continues to cause ecological concern globally, but there have been no published reviews of their effects in the UK. Impacts in the UK are therefore reviewed, along with current legislation and guidelines relating to the introduction and control of such species.

2. A large number of non-native species have been introduced to the UK, both deliberately and accidentally, but only a small number of introduced non-native species have established and caused detrimental ecological impacts. However, general declines in UK biodiversity, and the potential effects of future climate change, may increase the susceptibility of ecosystems to invasions.

3. Detrimental impacts of non-native species on native biota have occurred through competition, predation, herbivory, habitat alteration, disease and genetic effects (i.e. hybridization). There are potential effects on genetic biodiversity as well as species biodiversity.

4. Several high profile examples highlight the technical difficulties, and financial implications, of removing an introduced species once it is established. Few UK control or eradication programmes have been successful.

5. Control might be more feasible if ‘problem’ species could be identified at an earlier stage of establishment. However, the poor success of attempts to characterize invasive species and predict which will have negative impacts highlight the individual and unpredictable nature of invasions. The difficulties of making general predictions suggest that every proposed species introduction should be subject to rigorous ecological characterization and risk assessment prior to introduction.

6. The plethora of UK legislation and guidelines developed to reduce impacts of non-native species only go part of the way towards ameliorating impact. Many species already established in the wild might cause future problems. Illegal releases and escapes of non-native species may augment feral populations or establish new colonies. While regulation of imports and releases is important, further enforcement of existing legislation and action against unlicensed releases is necessary.

The impacts of non-native species on UK biodiversity and the effectiveness of control.

Port Phillip Bay (PPB) is a large (1,930 km2), temperate embayment in southern Victoria, Australia. Extensive bay-wide surveys of PPB have occurred since 1840. In 1995/1996 the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Centre for Research on Introduced Marine Pests (CRIMP) undertook an intensive evaluation of the region with the aims of developing a comprehensive species list of native and introduced biota and contrasting previous bay-wide assessments with a current field survey in order to detect new incursions and discern alterations to native communities. Two methods were used to meet these aims: a re-evaluation of regional museum collections and published research in PPB to identify and determine the timing of introductions; and field surveys for benthic (infauna, epifauna and encrusting) organisms between September 1995 to March 1996. One hundred and sixty introduced (99) and cryptogenic (61) species were identified representing over 13% of the recorded species of PPB. As expected, the majority of these are concentrated around the shipping ports of Geelong and Melbourne. Invasions within PPB appear to be increasing, possibly due to an increase in modern shipping traffic and an increase in aquaculture (historically associated with incidental introductions); however the records of extensive biological surveys suggest that this may, in part, be an artefact of sampling effort. In contrast to Northern Hemisphere studies, PPB (and Southern Hemisphere introductions in general) have significantly different suites of successfully invading taxa. PPB is presented as one of the most invaded marine ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere.

Introduced and cryptogenic species in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia

In almost all parts of the world, including Britain, some invading species have had a marked impact on the abundance and distribution of the native biota. The com­ munities affected include natural and seminatural ones, although the effect of inva­ sions is better known in agricultural habitats. Because of the importance of this prob­ lem in some areas both economically and for conservation, SCOPE (the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment) initiated a programme in 1982 that com­ prised national meetings and international working parties. This volume records the papers and discussion at a Royal Society Discussion Meet­ ing in February 1986, which was the British National meeting under the SCOPE pro­ gramme. Partly because of the strong tradition of natural history in this country, British data on the distribution, spread and impact of invaders are as good as any. In recent years British ecology has been noted for its strength in quantitative studies, both analysis and modelling, so this national SCOPE meeting not only concentrated on the quantitative aspects of invasions in a British context, but also reports on the results of two of the SCOPE international working parties, on modelling invasions and on inva­ sions into nature reserves. Included in the papers in this volume there are discussions of invasions by plants, animals and microbes, of the importance of genetic and historical factors, and of mod­ els of different invasive processes. From the surveys of what is known of British invad­ ers and their characteristics there are critical discussions of the extent to which valid generalizations may be made in this field. The volume will be of interest to ecologists and conservationalists, to population geneticists and naturalists, and to adminis­ trators and planners concerned with invasive species and their effects.

Book review: Quantitative Aspects of the Ecology of Biological Invasions

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Book review: Quantitative Aspects of the Ecology of Biological Invasions