A Risk Screening of Potential Invasiveness of Alien and Neonative Marine Fishes in the Mediterranean Sea: Implications for Sustainable Management

Sercan Yapici

doi:10.3390/su132413765

Abstract

Biological invasions have posed a major threat to global and regional biodiversity. The Mediterranean Sea, one of the major biodiversity hotspots in the world, has long suffered multiple and frequent invasion events. This paper represents the screening results of the potential invasiveness of 23 introduced marine fish species, which are classified as neonative and alien. To predict the invasiveness potential of species under current and predicted climate conditions, the Aquatic Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (AS-ISK) is applied. Thresholds have been constituted to classify low, medium and high-risk species by receiver operative characteristic curve analysis (ROC). The calibrated basic and climate-change threshold assessment scores used to classify species from low, to medium to high risk were computed between 27.5 and 33.0 respectively. Based on these thresholds, under current climatic conditions, 15 species were high risk, while the remaining species were medium risk, and the Chaetodipterus faber and the Holocentrus adscensionis switched from the medium-risk to the high-risk group under future climatic conditions. The highest score belonged to Fistularia petimba, followed by Siganus fuscescens, Abudefduf spp., Acanthurus monroviae and Lutjanus argentimaculatus. This study focused on the species that have not been assessed for their invasiveness potential, and the results can provide important insights into their sustainable management in the future.

Highlights

Whether in terrestrial or freshwater and marine ecosystems, management of invasive non-native species has been a difficult challenge for scientists and public authorities
The receiver operative characteristic curve analysis (ROC) curves for the Basic Risk Assessment (BRA) resulted in an Area Under the Curve or AUC of 0.9389 (0.8401 to 1.000 95% CI), and for the BRA + Climate Change Assessment (CCA) it resulted in an AUC of 0.9333
Scores between −20 and 1.0 and BRA + CCA scores between −32 and 1.0. Concerning both the BRA and BRA + CCA thresholds, 15 (65.2%) of the 23 screened species were classified as high-risk and 8 (34.8%) were classified as medium-risk, while no species were found in the low-risk group

Summary

Introduction

Whether in terrestrial or freshwater and marine ecosystems, management of invasive non-native species has been a difficult challenge for scientists and public authorities. These species directly cause the extinction of other species while indirectly causing changes in ecosystem functioning [1]. Since humans are terrestrial mammals, they perceive changes in their own habitats more quickly; management strategies and action plans have tended to be developed mostly for terrestrial ecosystems. This tendency hinders the development of management strategies against aquatic invasive species [2]. There are some difficulties in implementing actions against biological invasions in aquatic ecosystems (especially marine ecosystems) compared to terrestrial ecosystems, which are as follows:

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion