Abstract
The knowledge of biotic and abiotic drivers that put non-native invasive fishes at a disadvantage to native ones is necessary for suppressing invasions, but the knowledge is scarce, particularly when abiotic changes are fast. In this study, we increased this knowledge by an analysis of the biomass of most harmful Prussian carp Carassius gibelio in a river reviving from biological degradation. The species' invasion followed by the invasion's reversal occurred over only two decades and were documented by frequent monitoring of fish biomass and water quality. An initial moderate improvement in water quality was an environmental filter that enabled Prussian carp’s invasion but prevented the expansion of other species. A later substantial improvement stimulated native species’ colonization of the river, and made one rheophil, ide Leuciscus idus, a significant Prussian carp’s replacer. The redundancy analysis (RDA) of the dependence of changes in the biomass of fish species on water quality factors indicated that Prussian carp and ide responded in a significantly opposite way to changes in water quality in the river over the study period. However, the dependence of Prussian carp biomass on ide biomass, as indicated by regression analysis and analysis of species traits, suggests that the ecomorphological similarity of both species might have produced interference competition that contributed to Prussian carp’s decline.
Highlights
The knowledge of biotic and abiotic drivers that put non-native invasive fishes at a disadvantage to native ones is necessary for suppressing invasions, but the knowledge is scarce, when abiotic changes are fast
Non-native species are a major driver of the biotic homogenization and loss of biodiversity of freshwater ecosystems[1,2,3]
Complete untransformed biomass data obtained on each sampling occasion for all fish species for which regression models could be constructed are presented in Table S1. (See Penczak et al.[24], for the complete fish species list of the river, and Supplementary data of Penczak et al.[24] for fish species richness, biomass and abundance in given sections in given sampling surveys)
Summary
The knowledge of biotic and abiotic drivers that put non-native invasive fishes at a disadvantage to native ones is necessary for suppressing invasions, but the knowledge is scarce, when abiotic changes are fast. We increased this knowledge by an analysis of the biomass of most harmful Prussian carp Carassius gibelio in a river reviving from biological degradation. Among non-native freshwater fish species, Prussian carp Carassius (auratus) gibelio (Bloch 1782)[4] is probably the second most harmful such driver beside common c arp[5] in the temperate climatic z one[6,7,8,9]. The cause of Prussian carp’s harmfulness is their ability to establish in and quickly invade freshwater ecosystems of any scale, in Eurasia[10,11,12] This ability has long produced a need for inventing methods of suppressing Prussian carp, which should be easy in view of an extensive knowledge of Prussian carp’s traits[13,14,15,16,17]. Made along the whole river in 2000–2012 (see Penczak et al.[24], for details), in the course of which fish species’ incidence, abundance and biomass were determined
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