Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
is greater than the number of species which managed to survive transport
and establish a population, then a bioinvasion occurs. Therefore, marine
biological invasions are increasingly altering coastal biota, generating
changes in the chemical and/or physical properties of an ecosystem,
ecosystem functioning and ultimately result in adverse effects on economy
and human health (Convention on Biological Diversity 2004, Lodge et al.
2006, European Commission 2008, Nunes and Markandya 2008, Pyšek
and Richardson 2010). Even when it is very diffi cult to predict which non-
indigenous species (NIS) may result in detrimental effects on environmental
quality, not all NIS will necessarily cause harm to the environment (Olenin
et al. 2011).
The fi rst requirement for NIS to become successfully established is to
have the physiological ability to survive in a new environment (Ignacio
et al. 2012). Besides survival, resource acquirement capability is another
major factor affecting the establishment, range expansion and invasiveness
potential of a NIS (Shea and Chesson 2002). The ecological changes that
arise as a consequence of introduced species have been established as one
of the most serious environmental concerns nowadays (Pederson and
Blakeslee 2008). Marine bioinvaders have sometimes been overlooked and
are certainly less well studied and documented than terrestrial and fresh-
water invasions, mainly because marine organisms are less conspicuous,
and not as easily sampled.
The occurrence of marine bioinvaders in advective environments (Byers
and Pringle 2008), and other characteristics linked to their life histories
such as open spawning, pelagic larval stages and large larval output, make
them successful and persistent over time. Moreover, basin-scale physical
events such as ENSO (Yamada and Gillespie 2008), and global climate
change phenomena may collaborate in spreading native and non-native
species (Cordell et al. 2008) with unknown resultant impacts (Pederson
and Blakeslee 2008). Human activities such as commercial shipping and
recreational boating, coastal urbanization and mariculture not only offer
new transport opportunities for NIS (Carlton 1996), but also new substrates
for colonization (Bulleri and Chapman 2010, Farrapeira 2011, Gittenberger
and Stelt 2011), and their spread (Glasby et al. 2007, Tyrrell and Byers
2007).
Biological invasions by NIS are currently spread to several coastal
areas worldwide. A comprehensive review of these is beyond the scope of
this chapter, but we have provided a few examples from the Northern and
Southern Hemispheres, and planktonic and benthic realms.
Initial records of seaweed introductions for the Northwest Atlantic
date back to the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Currently, the number of
introduced seaweeds is increasing worldwide, counting ~ 120 taxa, some
of which aggressively dominate marine habitats (Mathieson et al. 2008).
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