Aquatic invasion biology research in South America: Geographic patterns, advances and perspectives

Abstract

In this work, we describe and discuss the current status, trends, and gaps for aquatic invasion research in South America, and we reveal the current state of multinational collaborations on these matters across the continent. First, to measure temporal change in the magnitude of invasion research for South America, we replicated a survey performed in 2001 for marine exotic species, using identical methods used back then to search publications in the Aquatic Science and Fisheries Abstracts database. Second, to compare the South America invasion research effort, in terms of the production of scientific literature on aquatic invasion biology, across time (years), countries, aquatic (freshwater, estuarine, and marine) environments, themes, and taxonomic groups, we performed a more comprehensive search of publications using multiple databases (Scielo, ASFA, Scopus and Google Scholar). This exhaustive survey included articles in international, regional and local peer reviewed journals on aquatic (freshwater, marine and estuarine) exotic species of SA that were published between 2004 and 2014 in the three dominant languages of South America. We found that the research effort for marine exotic species research in South America increased 9-fold between the two time periods (1997–2001 vs. 2002–2014), with most (90%) of recent research occurring in the Atlantic (vs. Pacific) coast. This disparity in research effort between coasts is consistently evident for individual environments (including freshwater, estuarine, and marine waters) and countries. While the focus of publications is unevenly distributed among research themes and taxa, the paucity of comparative analyses among countries is especially striking. Despite the general increment in research effort within the discipline, we consider there is an urgent need for more solid and concerted multinational efforts to address (financially, scientifically and socially) the conspicuous gaps in aquatic invasion research. Failing to make these efforts is probably the major threat hampering the development of successful long term programs and strategies directed to prevent, manage and/or control the introduction of exotic species and their many impacts in the continent.

Keywords:

• international cooperation
• exotic species
• disciplinary bias
• research effort

Acknowledgements

We thank F. Sylvester and S. Bailey for the invitation to the Marine and Freshwater Invasive Species conference held in Buenos Aires where preliminary results were presented by ES. Thanks to Scientific and Organizing Committee Members for the excellent conference and for providing a nice environment for great discussions on aquatic invasive species. Special thanks to an anonymous referee and Greg Ruiz for sharing with us their thoughts, comments and suggestions, and for helping us to improve the quality of early versions of this manuscript. We are deeply grateful to our friends Carol and Wally Casper for their hospitality during the writing process of this work. Many thanks to Yanina Gonzalez (CENPAT's Library, UGI-SECEDOC) for all her kind professional assistance with the e-literature searching, to the Biodiversity Heritage Library for the exceptional database and kind assistance they constantly provide, and to the entire GEAC team (www.geaccenpat.wix.com/geac) for keeping us active. Special thanks to our always inspiring mentor Jim Carlton, who never stops wanting to work shoulder-to-shoulder every time we come to him with the wildest ideas. Finally, we thank the scientific ministry of Argentina, MINCyT, for supporting us as Co-Chairs of the X^th International Conference on Marine Bioinvasions 2018 to be held in Puerto Madryn, Patagonia, Argentina.

Funding

This research was supported by CONICET (PIP 20130100508 and 20100100089) and by ANPCyT-PICT P. BID # 2016–1083, led by the authors.