Tracking aquatic non-native macroinvertebrate species in Germany using long-term data

Abstract

Biological invasions pose a global challenge, threatening both biodiversity and human well-being. Projections suggest that as invasions increase, the financial costs associated with management and the ecological harm they cause will also escalate. Here, we examined whether long-term biomonitoring strategies were adequate to identify and track benthic aquatic non-native macroinvertebrate species by using the German subset (151 time series; 129 of which reported non-native species) of the currently most comprehensive European long-term dataset of 1816 macroinvertebrate community time series from 22 European countries. The detection of aquatic non-native species was directly linked to the availability of long-term sites and thus, monitoring effort, having identified the spatio-temporal occurrence of 32 non-native species. The available long-term monitoring site data were mostly concentrated in the western part of Germany, predominantly covering the Rhine River and its tributaries. The spatially biased network of long-term monitoring sites, therefore, naturally skews the detection and reporting of aquatic non-native species toward this area and underestimates Eastern and Southern regions, impeding the comprehension of invasion dynamics. However, based on the available data, we found that the absolute number of non-native species increased and the proportion of non-native species relative to native species decreased over time. This indicates complex ecological interactions between native and non-native species and underlines the value of long-term data for investigating invasion dynamics. Considering the value of comprehensive monitoring networks, a spatially biased network delays the application of management and mitigation plans, possibly worsening the ecological and economic effects of biological invasions in Germany. The results provided here indicate the disadvantages of biased datasets, but simultaneously underline the enormous potential of a dense network of long-term monitoring. Our results also highlight the urgent need to increase and diversify long-term biomonitoring efforts throughout Germany to cover the main freshwater resources and their connections where the introduction risk of non-native species is the highest. Centrally collating such data would provide a profound basis for the monitoring of spreading aquatic non-native species and could serve the implementation of national biosecurity efforts.