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Effort and Potential Efficiencies for Aquatic Non-native Species Early Detection
Citation:
HOFFMAN, J., J. R. KELLY, A. S. TREBITZ, G. S. PETERSON, AND C. W. WEST. Effort and Potential Efficiencies for Aquatic Non-native Species Early Detection. ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS. Ecological Society of America, Ithaca, NY, 68(12):2064-2079, (2011).
Impact/Purpose:
To document research results.
Description:
This manuscript is based on the early aquatic non-native species detection research in the Duluth-Superior harbor. The problem of early detection is essentially that of a "needle in a haystack" - to detect a newly arrived and presumably rare non-native species with a high probability, a lengthy effort is required capturing common species first. We used species acquisition theory to evaluate whether detection efficiencies cay be gained by comparing the success of competing survey designs to acquire non-native species. We then used the data set to determine the effort required for high-confidence early detection. Overall, we detected 21 non-native invertebrate and 10 non-native fish species in the Duluth-Superior harbor. The species acquisition curves, however, indicated that many rare species (though not necessarily non-native), especially zooplankton and benthos, were likely missed. Sampling across a representative range of aquatic habitats and comprehensively sampling the available microhabitats within each station increased species detection. Targeting areas where the local assemblage has high species richness or rare species further improved detection.The effort required to detect 95% of the species present (i.e., high confidence detection) was formidable. For benthic invertebrates (ca. 250 species), the effort could exceed sampling 60,000 individuals (>100 samples), for zooplankton (ca. 50 species), it could exceed 200,000 individuals (>300 samples) and for fish (ca. 40 species), it could exceed 50,000 individuals (>100 stations).